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YISION OF FAERY LAND 



OTHER POEMS 



WILLIAM GIBSON. 



BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE: 

JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY 
1853. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 

JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY, 

in the Clerk's office of the District Coiirt of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

ALLEN AND FARNHAM, PRINTERS; 
REMINGTON STREET. 



PREFACE. 



The sea is full of poetry — how beautiful and how wonder- 
ful he only whose home is upon it can properly know. The 
ship that moves over the waters, oftentunes solitary as a planet 
in space, is an object of high poetic interest and association, 
and its Httle world constitutes no unthoughtful study. The 
influence of the ocean over the imagination is evidenced in 
the superstitions of ruder mariners in all ages ; and it was the 
ocean which first awakened and afterwards gave full tone and 
magnificence to the genius of Byron. Yet it is strange that 
among those who are seafarers by profession there should be 
so few poets. What sailor but Falconer among the bards of 
England ? In the Navy of the United States we have had a 
Cooper ; for, though prosaic the form, the charm of his sea- 
scenes resides emphatically in their poetry. And we have 
had a Pickney, than some of whose minor verses there is 
nothing more exquisite in language. 

But the catalogue is a brief one. The author of this httle 
volume has not the vanity to assume to compensate for a pre- 
vious deficiency. Indeed, not many of these trifles are, prop- 
erly speaking, songs of the sea. He would simply express 
surprise that such a deficiency should exist ; conscious himself 
that he has been, in no slight degree, moved and moulded — 
in his feelings, if not in his faculties — by the subhmlty which 
has flowed around him from his childhood upward. 



IV PREFACE. 

Many of these poems were written wMle he was but a 
" school-boy midshipman ; " only a very few being the effort 
of a less immature ambition. This is stated, not so much in 
deprecation of just criticism upon the productions themselves, 
as in explanation of their prevaihng character and tenor. 
Those which are not purely descriptive are, it is feared, over- 
insubstantial. They lack the thews and the sinews of that 
poetry best suited to a practical age — the flesh and blood of 
warm and ripe human passion. Yet the imagination of a bo}' 
can hardly be so athletic, or so trained, as to grapple manfully 
with the realities of life ; it has no development, no world of 
experience ample enough ; and, unless it be morbid, it can 
have passed through no sufficient school of suffering. These 
may come in time. Out of his own emotions must the poet 
create ; and never otherwise will the thoughts breathe and the 
words burn. The author's aspiration is, therefore, Hmited. If 
his fancy be too subtle and unreal, and its type be the intan- 
gible Egeria of the dreaming Roman, rather than a mascuhne 
Apollo, if he has endeavored more to catch faintly the phan- 
tasmal beauty, which beguiled the lonely hours of many a mid- 
night watch, than to draw in strong outlines the substances 
of his daylight moments, — let the plea of youth suffice for his 
excuse. Shall he dare to hope that his verse, here and there, 
may be suggestive, how dimly soever, of true reverence for 
all Truth, and genuine worship of that divine something, 
which blossoms in the weed, and whose highest phase is mani- 
fest in the " beauty of holiness ? " 



IJ. S. Steamer John Hancock, 
New York, April 29th, 1853 



:-| 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE.- 

A Vision of the Faery Land and Sea, . . .1 

The Captive Beautj-, 1 

The Bereaved Lover, 8^ 

The Sylphid Queen, 15 

The Escape, 21 

Giilnare : A Phantasm, 28 

Emph-e : A Modem Ode, 47 

The Corcovado, 55 

A Sabbath Evening at Sea, 66 

To the Albatross, 70 

Lines on the Death of Commander TVilliam Boerum, U. S. N. 72 

The Straits of Gibraltar, 77 

The Castle of Al Waled, 81 

The Approach to Marseilles, 82 

The Alps, 83 

Genoa. Evening, 84 

Pisa, 85 

Naples, 86' 

Vesuvius, 87'^ 



VI CONTENTS. 

Posilipo, ~ 88 

Cadiz, 89 

The Faraesian Hercules, 90 

The Venus Callipyge, 91 

The Eternal Father, 96 

Abderahmet, 99 

The Grotto Azure, 102 

Cintra, 106 

The"Keefer," 119 

The Phantom Goose, 122 

Storm and Sunset, 139 

Hawaii, 143 

The Columbia Elver, 146 

FareweU, 149 

Elegiac Stanzas, 151 

Song, 155 

The Walk of Love, 156 

Song of the Evil Spirit, 158 

A Sketch, 163 

The Vision of Isaiah, 165 

The Vision of Ezekiel, 168 

To Helen, 171 

TheEoses, 172 

The Flames, . 175 

In Sternum, 177 

Fons Lachrymarum, 182 

The Daisy, 185 

On a Picture, 188 

Song, 189 

Fans and Flirtations, 191 



CONTENTS. Vii 

Katharine of Arragon, 193 

A Sketch, 194 

The Seasons, 195 

A Conceit, 196 

To a Canary Bird, 198 

Christmas Chimes, 201 

Oralie, 204 

Childhood, 211 



POEMS. 



A VISION OP THE FAERY LAND AND SEA. 



" The voice that ofttimes hath 



Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." 

Keats. — Ode to a Nightingale 

" She only said, ' My life is dreary, 
He Cometh not,' she said ; 
She said, ' I am aweary, aweary, 
I would that I were dead ! ' " 

Tennyson. — Mariana on the Moated Grange. 



THE CAPTIVE BEAUTY. 

I. 

A TIME wliicli was not night nor day, — 
A sliade of tranced twilight flung, — 

No sun, nor moon, nor spheral ray. 

In what seemed heaven's blue concave hung, 
A palace casement, — and a young 
1 



A VISION OF THE 

Fair lady, looking o'er the foam ; 

And ever at lier ear it sung — 

A bird unseen — a song of home. 

She wist not change of even and morn ; 

And alway prayed she, 
To fly from faery land forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 

II. 

Tho' never had she dreamed before 

Of aught so glorious and grand 
As that vast palace by the shore, 

Erected by no mortal hand ; 

Tho' golden was the very sand 
Whereon it stood, — of massy gold 

Its orient pillars, azure-spanned 
With arches, beauteous to behold. 

Which, mocking heaven, gem-stars adorn ; 
Yet alway prayed she. 

To fly from faery land forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 

III. 
Of agate-marble were the floors, 
Delicate with vari-tinted veins ; 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 

Of sandal-wood the panelled doors, 
Odorous, with rose and ebon stains, 
Yeneered with mother-o'-pearl and panes 

Of amber. Drops of chilly light 
Fell from the roof, like wintry rains 

From thin clouds on a moonlight night. 

She sighed for change of even and morn 
And alway prayed she. 

To fly from faery land forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 

IV. 
Was she alone ? Why in such flutter 
Her caged heart, as the arras shook 
Without a wind ? Loneliness utter 
Far better could the maiden brook. 
Than from those painted eyes the look 
Of speculation, like to life ; 

For, like some old illumined book, 
With strange forms were those arras rife ; 
And they were jewelled hke the morn. 

And alway prayed she. 
To fly from faery land forlorn. 
Athwart that faery sea. 



A VISION OF THE 

V. 

From hall to hall she glided on, 
Pale, silent, like a phantom shape ; 

Her bare arms and her brow how wan 
Beside the snowy mists of crape 
And silken clouds her form that drape ! 

Wliile droj)ped with pearls, in size not less 
Than e'er the dewy-colored grape, 

Were all her lengths of lustrous tress. 
The shadow of her marriage-mom, 

So gliding, prayed she, 
To fly from faery land forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 

VI. 

Painfully tense, the silentness 
Unstrung itself : along the floor 

Low horrors rustled, where her dress 
Trailed ; sudden openings of a door 
Brought voices, which, if listening for, 

She heard not ; empty chambers on 
Eang echoing with " Eleanor ; " 

She hastens, — pauses : they are gone. 
Fancy was it or faery scorn 

That mocked her ? Prayed she, 
To fly from faery land forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 

vn. 

The tables there were ever set, 

By viewless hands, for their one guest : 

On cloths damasked of violet 

Dainties in gold, piled as in haste, 
Wines, ruby-served, tempted the taste ; 

But mortal saw she none, nor fay. 

To cheer her 'mid that sumptuous waste 

And, lonely, turned she thence away. 
For days, unmarked by even and morn, 

Still fasting, prayed she, 
To fly from faery land forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 

VIII. 

She strayed those palace walls without, 
Half stifled in the spacious rooms. 

Gardens did girdle them about. 
Nectarine fruits, ambrosial blooms. 
All charms, all colors, all perfumes. 

The very blossoms, of themselves. 
Were incense-lamps to foliage-glooms. 

Which emeralded those faery shelves. 
For dews of even, for dawn of morn, 

There alway prayed she, 
To fly from faery land forlorn. 
Athwart that faery sea. 



A VISION OF THE 

IX. 

There flowers of light, the hyacinth 
And lily, drooped as she for day ; 

There many a mazy labyrinth, 

Where never shone one sunny ray, 
Intricate, implicate, wound away : 

Wild overgrowth and waste excess. 
Wherein she rightly feared to stray ; 

Terror ambushed in loveliness. 

And so she sighed for even and morn, 

For sunlight, prayed she ; 
To fly from faery land forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 

X. 

Those garden-shades were musical 
With carol-trills and warbles clear, 

With welling fount and waterfall, — 
But why that undertone of fear 
That rang thro' all that met her ear ? 

One song, for all these melodies. 

Her casement-song, to her was dear, 

With its love-breathed memories. 

Such had she heard at even and morn, 

Ere ever prayed she. 
To fly from faery land forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 
XI. 

She fled the music and the splendor, 
And sought her chamber's soHtude, 

With her heart-warmed presence tender, 
And bahny with her breath, subdued 
To sympathy with maidenhood. 

There wept she ; — and that faery dome 
Had pearls less precious than imbued 

Her violet-eyes ; and from the foam 
The bird's song to her heart was borne ; 

And alway prayed she. 
To fly from faery land forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 

XII. 
She loved, — and where was all the*While, 

A captive she, her own true knight. 
He, whose soul shrined her earnest smile. 
To whom her virgin youth was plight ? 
Would no kind spirit reunite 
Their severed fates, — no Ariel elf ? 

Sweet lady ! she bemoaned his fright, 
And wept, not thinking of herself 
But, hke faint starlight for the mom, 

In tear-dews prayed she. 
To fly with him, from lands forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea. 



A VISION OF THE 



THE BEREAVED LOVER. 

I. 

Honor, truth, knightly courtesy. 

Sir Ralph in comely shape revealed ; 

He flashed in the front of chivalry 
The boast emblazoned on his shield, 
"When all the ringing tourney reeled ; 

And true-love knotted scarf he bore. 
None bravelier ; Queen of every field, 

Peerless was Lady Eleanor 
Among the beautiful high-born. 

Ah ! never then had she 
Imagined faery land forlorn, 
Or dreamed of its dark sea. 

II. 

0, gallant all from spur to feather. 
Ever, so brave and debonair, 

Sir Ralph rode out in sapphire weather ; 
And ever a faery hung in air. 
With loving eyes to watch him there 

Cantering, a tiercelet on his wrist ; 
Nor did the sylphid queen despair 

To charm him from his mortal tryst. 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 9' 

But lie mocked her love with a merry scorn, 

And she vowed, if wedded he. 
His bride to bear, alone and lorn, 

Athwart the faery sea. 

III. 
But Hope rode plumed on his career. 

And when at length this hope was crowned, — 
In that sweet time of all the year 

"When blossoms their fructescence found, 
Eipe sweetness in each roseate round, — 
How glowed his veins, all summer-tide, 

When, with dropped eyes that sought the ground,. 
Blushed by his side his beauteous bride ! 
Too happy on that happy mom 

For fears, for thoughts, was he, 
Of faery spells, of lands forlorn, 
Beyond the faery sea. 

IV. 

And Love, thro' all the unshadowed hours 
Reigned : all was rapture : gray-beard Time 

Slept, muffled up in joyous flowers, 
Whereof a whole delicious clime 
Blew thro' long alleys of the lime : 

Love languished down thro' music-falls ; 



10 A VISION OF THE 

With crimson ardors in the prime 
Flushed up to the white coronals 

On maiden brows. So passed the morn. 

Wliat will the evening be ? 
Already enchantments all forlorn 

Are woven athwart the sea. 

V. 

And now had evening come, — and shot 

Strange fire-fly lights along the park ; 
But soon a burning glory smote 

From the great windows all the dark ; 

"With flow deep, rich, voluptuous, — hark, 
The mellow surge of music tidal ! 

Then it ebbed moaning. Like a shark 
Grew up, blue-gliding, thro' the bridal, 

Leaden-cold horror. Even and morn. 
How different they may be ! 

What monsters rise from depths forlorn 
Into the sunniest sea ! 

VI. 

As from these monsters to and fro 

Shoaled flying fish flit on silvery wings, 

The bridesmaids : young breasts tightened so 
With rounded throbs and flutterincrs, 
They scarce had breath for wonderings : 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. H 

" Vanished ! yet whither could she go ? 

0, have you seen the bride ? Why sings 
That dreadful bird its note of woe ? " 
" Wo to the loveless lady borne, 
Pale maidens, far from ye ! " 
And it seemed to tell of lands forlorn. 
Athwart a perilous sea. 

VII. 
But he, — not tho' unhorsed, unhelmed, 

He, lord of the lists, proud chivalry's flower, 
His splendid vanity disrealmed, 
Discrowned of all, the very power 
Of his right arm reft in an hour. 
So would his life of life have died, — 

O, no calamity else could cower 
The bridegroom, mourning for his bride. 
And the round world, from morn to morn, 

Rolled eastward on ; and he 
Was like an unmanned ship forlorn. 
Adrift on the lone gray sea. 

VIII. 
He had a dream which bade him forth ; 
He launched his shallop from the strand ; 



12 A VISION OF THE 

Cloud-like he saw the fleeting earth, 

And steered in search of faery land. 

The eve was beautiful and bland, 
The moon was rising, full and pale, 

And gentle night-winds lightly fanned 
His fevered brow, and filled his sail. 

He watched the even, nor wished for morn ; 
And " Whither," moaned he, 

" Whither is faery land forlorn, 
And o'er what foaming sea ? " 



IX. 

Orange and purple overpast, 

The sky was now all silvery mist ; 
A long, bright track the round moon glassed 

Within the deep wave's amethyst ; 

He chose that track, nor why he wist. 
He was so woofed in waking dreams ; 

The boat, with neither lurch nor list. 
Smoothly skimmed o'er those mirrored beams. 

Night followed even, 'twould soon be morn : 
And " Whither," moaned he, 

" Whither is faery land forlorn, 
And o'er what foaming sea ? " 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 13 

X. 

The boat sped on : that silver Ime 

He lost as higher rose the moon ; 
And spells of potent anodyne 

His senses steeped in slumber soon, — 

A death-like sleep, — a magic swoon. 
The boat sped on, — he woke — and where ? 

There was no moon nor star aboon, 
Dark was the sea, and dim the air. 

It was not night, nor even nor mom : 
" Is this, then," murmured he, 

" Is this the approach to lands forlorn, 
And this the faery sea ? " 

XI. 

A voice, as of a bird, was singing 

A sweet song that beguiled him on : 
'Twas near, — yet was there no bird winging 

The air, with starless twilight wan. 

Nor shade of bird the waves upon. 
When, lo ! refracted from the foam, 

Like first fine flecks of Boreal dawn, 
The radiance of a shining dome ! 

Hope in his heart had made it morn : 
And "Thither," shouted he, 

" Thither is faery land forlorn, 
And here the faery sea." 



14 A VISION OF THE 

xn. 

The sea broke on the building's basement : 

Its whirlpools must his skiff submerge. 
The bird's song, by an open casement, 

Thrilled thro' and thro' the roar o' the surge. 

It needed scarce such voice to urge 
His shallop toward the stormed strand : 

It overturned on the breaker's verge ; 
But lightly leaped he thence to land. 

" O, that I had the wings of morn ! " 
Thus, captive, murmured he, 

" To fly with her, from lands forlorn, 
Athwart that faery sea." 



THE SYLPHID QUEEN. 

I. 
Tho' elfin clouds to windward loomed, 

Like dragons riding on the air, 
And by the palace-portal gloomed 

Shapes as of Genii-warders there, 

Tho' palsied Silence looked Beware ! 
Sir Ralph passed on unharmed ; — and over 

The summit of the ascending stair 
Did faery faces seem to hover ; 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 15' 

And faery voices, like birds at morn, 

Did carol coaxingly. 
That faery land was not forlorn, 

Tho' dark the faery sea. 

II. 

He reached the banquet-hall, not now. 

As it had been, lone, chill, and drear, 
Wasting its sweets and perfumed glow 

On mortal maid, grief-charmed in prayer. 

The Faery Court was feasting there. 
And first he saw, o'er all the scene, 

A throne one crowned brow uprear ; 
And well he knew the Sylphid Queen. 

Like the one star of even and morn, 
In beauty, swayed she 

That faery realm, tho' called forlorn, 
And dark its girdling sea. 

III. 
There sylphs, and fays, and elves, and ouphes, 

All ranks in faery heraldries. 
Pranked forth in many-colored woofs, 

Were thick as sunbeams in the skies. 

Their wings, freaked like the butterfly's,- 



16 A VISION OF THE 

Swept the smooth floor with trailed tips. 

They sipt of sweets, and dehcacies, 
And wines touched ne'er to human lips. 
They feared no peering eyes of morn. 

And gazing, wondered he 
Why faery land should be forlorn. 
Or dark the faery sea. 

IV. 

But, O, amidst that festival. 

How bright the Sylph-Queen's face and form ! 
Her crescent-fronted coronal 

Of diamond, and her eyes, soft, warm. 

And vermeil-lidded, gave a charm 
To her fair brow such as, at even. 

The new moon, and the stars that swarm 
In faint rose-shadows, give to heaven. 

" Could ere that brow be bent in scorn 
Or anger ? " murmured he, 

" Yet hath she borne to lands forlorn 
My bride athwart the sea." 

V. 

Slight seemed her frame, yet with such grace 
Sat never Queen upon her throne. 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. If 

Looks were down-cliarmed from her face 

By the full swelling of her zone, 

Which, veiled by its own radiance, shone, 
And, veiled, was more voluptuous. 

She looked like Light, thro' foliage blown. 
Whereof the winds are amorous. 

Light, iris-mantled by the morn. 
" Thus ravishing," thought he, 

" Are charms of faery land forlorn. 
More perilous than its sea." 

VI. 

One fair sylph led him to her feet, 

As gracefully she waved her wish. 
She spake ; her utterance low and sweet. 
But a loud triumph in the flush 
That gave her eloquent cheek its blush : 
" Sir knight," she whispered, " kneel for pardon^ 

This faery hand has power to crush ; 
But blissful, too, may be its guerdon. 
Here evermore forget to mourn : 
Remain," soft whispered she, 
" Seems faery land to thee forlorn, 
O, voyager o'er its sea ? " 
2 



18 A VISION OF THE 

vn. 

In sovereign beauty's conscious glow 

She stooped her canopy beneath, 
The whiles that banquet passed, — and, lo ! 

Her sylphids wildering waltzes wreathe. 

Of her near lips the enamored breath, 
A fire-dew, on his brow he felt : 

Unnerved, in embalmed death, 
Blinded, and blanched, and chilled, he knelt. 

" Stay. Not for long fair widows mourn : 
Stay," closelier sighed she, 

" Thy bride, from lands to her forlorn. 
Shall cross the faery sea. 

VIII. 
^' We meet at last in faery land. 

As we, at Vesper's pageant-hour. 
Have met on Ocean's margent-sand ; 

How oft, when gloomed in Summer's bower 
Noon-shade and starlight ; — thine the power 
Which tells from air our textures fine ; 

Whilst here thy lady, in her tower. 
In vacant solitude must pine. 

But peopled beams of even and morn 

Shall cheer her. She is free 
Her friends to meet, no more forlorn. 
Lone looking o'er the sea. 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 19 

IX. 

'• Let this kiss crown thee," bhished the sylph, 

" The lord of all my faery palace ! 
Bid back the banquet. Drink, Sir Ralph, 

The brimmed joy beaded in this chalice ; 

0, thou, so cruel, cold, and callous 
To love far richer than thy bride's ; 

And only love for thee, nor malice 
Is mine for all the world besides. 

Stay, having reached this blissful bourne," 
And bloomed she rapturously, 

" And we will free this lady lorn 
From faery land and sea." 

X. 

" 0, she is here ! " wildly he said. 

And dashed the thick tears from his eyes, 
" Blest be my dream, the voice which led 

My course beneath these beamless skies ! 

That voice's liquid melodies 
Flow, charming here one casement only : 

If, where that casement opes, she lies 
Witliin, in grief's bleak shade, and lonely, 

Shut out from hope, as from the morn 
This faery land must be. 

Release me from this spell forlorn. 
That both may cross the sea." 



20 A VISION OF THE 

XI. 

He heard, he thought, her meek, low plain, 
Fancied her sorrowing, timid, lone ; 

And he his tears could scarce restrain, 
And his voice deepened in its tone : 
" Sweet Sylphid ! here, before thy thi'one, 

To thy entrancing charms I bend ; 
But, 0, a mortal's beauty, own 

That it may match, if not transcend. 
Ay ! still as fair, tho' sorrow-worn, 

And stiU as dear to me ; 
To us is faery land forlorn, 
And we would cross its sea." 

xn. 

The Faery's large eyes, coldly bright'ning, 

No more were soft with passion's dew ; — 
He started up ; for sheeted lightning 

Enveloped her in lurid blue. 

And then the doors wide open flew : 
He heard the sound o' the sea and thunder. 

All things grew terrible of hue ; 
And earthquakes rocked the firm floor under. 

Her lip, unlovely with wreathed scorn, 
He saw ; but more feared he 

Her smiles than frowns, her charms forlorn 
Than stormy land or sea. 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 21 



THE ESCAPE. 

I. 

The knight, whom hostile elves environ 
Grasps, — and as quick lets fall his sword ; 

For music, hark ! from what sweet syren, 
From what soft tongue, what throat of bird, 
Came those delicious strains he heard, 

Stilling all barbarous dissonance ? 

And from what lavish fount was poured 

At once so large a radiance ? 

'Twas orient light and music of morn : 

And all amazed was he. 
As one who finds, in dream forlorn, 
Fu"m footing on the sea. 

n. 

The lady Eleanor had there 

Oft wearily paced the length o' the hall, 
And lonely was ; yet all the air 

Seemed thick with Hfe : now, empty all. 

There breathed no feast ambrosial. 
There bloomed no garlands amarantliine 5 

From its high source empyreal 
Grew that clear lustre adamantine 



A VISION OF THE 

A terrible power and glory of morn 

To forms of glamoury ; 
Fled fay and sylph ; and, unforlorn, 

The voice sung from the sea. 



m. 

The Sylph-Queen stayed alone, transformed 
Anew, now calm in queenly pride ; 

But softness, born of sadness, warmed 
Her glowing eyes, as thus she sighed : 
" Free thou art now to seek thy bride : 

A power to mine superior 

Doth guard thy love, since morning-tide 

Flows where it never flowed before. 
The happy spirit that hails the morn 

Is singing, — hark ! " sighed she, 
"And I, I only, am forlorn, 
Wliile ye shall cross the sea. 

IV. 

"As, in fields fresh and ghttering. 
The child sports, from its daisied bed 

Winging the lark, — as poets sing, — 
Melhfluous in the morning-red. 
So the heart unimpassioned, 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 23' 

In early youth, wakes everywhere, 

Without, within, pure voices, wed 
In truth to all that's good and fair. 

But strains as sweet are of fancy born, — 

As pure they cannot be, — 
Insidious ; and seems Nature lorn 
To faery land and sea. 

V. 

" Then is the youth or maiden ours. 

And seeks false joys that have no soul ; 
Alike the restless, listless hours 

Enervate, unennobled, roll : 

Mortal, with no immortal goal ! 
Love o'er that flowery Ufe-in-death 

May triumph ; and the heart beats whole 
When, linked to high religious faith, 

Like this bold anthem of the morn, 
Its voice sings holily ; 

Love only make our realm forlorn, 
Forlorn its land and sea. 

VI. 

" From whispers of mistrust exempt 

Thrice blessed they whom it shall haunt !. 



24 A VISION OF THE 

In vain may powers of faery tempt, 
Its holier charm can disenchant: 
It sings the yearning spirit's want, 

It sings devotion, warm and true : 
For minstrel else ye will not pant. 

So long as sings that Voice to you. 
But, should it cease, of even and morn 

Ye will distressed be ; 
Then faery tones, howe'er forlorn. 
Shall woo you o'er the sea. 



vn. 

" If e'er should die that dulcet tune, 
And vibrate no heart-chord within. 

If — rainbows withering in the moon — 
Thy hopes grow phantom-white and thin, 
Their colors as they ne'er had been, — 

For so fare most on earth that dwell, — 
Then realms of mine shall woo and win. 

And we may meet, — Till then Farewell ! " 
She faded like the moon at morn. 

In gold-clouds fleeted she : 
.Sir Ealph was lone m halls forlorn. 
As on the faery sea. 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 25 

VIII. 

Spake not the parting Faery truth ? 

But what cares Love when blithe Hope sings? 
Imj)ulsive and impassioned youth 

Has, m his hour of ardor, wings. 

Upward, from stair to stair, he springs, 
And finds his lady's chamber, led 

By love's own shadowy whisperings. 
And — Mary Mother! Is she dead? 

Tho' beamed and breathed the blessed morn, 
Pale on her couch lay she, 

A blighted flower in lands forlorn, 
Beside the faery sea. 

IX. 
He gazed on that sweet face, soul-anguished : 

It was no natural repose. 
The swoon whereinto she had languished ; 
For on her cheek was blanched the rose, 
"White, coldly white, as mountain-snows ; 
Hardly she breathed, so deep the lull 

Of life which tranced her many woes ; — 
Yet was she very beautiful ! 

" She sleeps, nor dreams, alas ! of morn ; 

But, 0, not dead ! " said he, 
"And we will fly from lands forlorn 
Athwart the faery sea. 



26 A VISION OF THE 

X. 

He knelt, — he clasped her drooping form, 

B J his fii'st touch half vivified ; 
And soon on his her heart grew warm. 
Disquieting her tender side ; 

Her eyes unclosed ; life's ruddy tide 
Leaped to his kiss on hp and cheek : — 

" My hope ! my heaven ! " he breathed, " my bride ! ' 
She looked the love she could not speak. 

And freshlier blew the breeze of morn : 
" O, joy too great ! " sighed she, 

" I dream sweet dreams, that, unforlorn, 
Have quelled the faery sea." 

XI. 

He bore her down the marble stau', 

Whilst figures on the tapestries 
Grew fainter m the morning air. 
With interwreathed symmetries 
Dissolving in mute ecstacies ; 
Like fits of flame in dying embers ; 
Or northern lights that, fleeting, rise 

Li drear skies, like our own December's, 
South-eastward wliilst comes conquering morn : 

" O, hasten ! " murmured she, 
" And let us fly from lands forlorn. 
Athwart the faery sea ! " 



FAERY LAND AND SEA. 27 

XII. 

His shallop faery hands had righted, 

And at the palace-portal moored. 
The faery sea, now unbenighted. 

Lay smooth before him, crystal-floored. 

Soon, freighted with his heart's adored. 
The boat her swift way homeward won ; — 

With sudden thought he turns toward 
That faery house, — and, lo ! the sun ! 

Fled faery land before the morn. 
As visions all must flee : 

Lady nor lover from lands forlorn 
Were on the sunny sea ! 



GULN ARE: 

A PHAXTASM. 



I. 

Doth echo answer phantasie, 

That, crazed by despair 
Till he hath a sort of hope, 
Under all the starry cope. 
His face against the grassy slope. 

Still calleth on Gulnare, 
Nor will believe such charms can cease to be ? 
He cannot think that the sweet light 

Which set so soon 

Shall never more grow bright, — 
A mornmg star, — a crescent moon ; 
With a fine sense the soul hath only 

When, by the tomb's dark portal, 
With a deep grief communing lonely, 
That Truth, and Love, and Beauty are immortal ! 



GULNARE. 29 

Life is the meteor's evanescence, 

'Tis the quick lightning's quiver : 
Yet are not these of Light's eternal essence, 
Which was before the world, and shall endure forever ? 

II. 

Doth echo answer phantasie ? 

It said Gulnare ! 
And who is this pale phantasie, 
Keeping night-guard faithfully 
Li Death's wliite encampment there, 

Whose watch-word is Gulnare ? 

And she, thus called, 0, where. 
Where is she, in her chill shroud. 
That, without charm of necromancer, 
Voices, as of Genii, answer 

For her from the cloud ? 
White her tomb gleams 'gainst the banks 
Behmd it, crowned with cypress-ranks, 
Wherefrom perpendicular 
Stand waters in a sliining column ; 
And in them doth a lustrous star 
Mirror and crystal-shrine its beam ; 
And from that column flows a fretting stream ; 
And, with those waters, music, sweet and solemn, 

Seems to come from far. 



30 GULNARE. 

III. 

Doth echo answer phantasie ? 
Mournfully the night-wmds sigh ; 
And slowly the stream is washing 

The mould her memory maketh dear, 
Whose dull, unvarying, wearying plashing 

Pains the mourner's ear, 
So cold, so blank, so hollow. 

It mocks like elfin laughter, 
With a Follow, Follow, Follow, 

To the bubbles that come after ; 
And hark to the deep complaming 

Of the cypress boughs above. 
The while the low moon waning 

Looks like the last farewell of love I 

IV. 

Echo spake not to phantasie, 

Nor was the weeper there 
Fooled by his own love-lorn folly ; 
But there was heard soft music melancholy ; 
And an articulate voice did sigh 
Sweetly, and low, but earnestly, 

Gulnare ! Gulnare ! Gulnare ! 
And m the charmed intervals 
Between those seeming spirit calls 



GULNARE. 31 

The earth rolled like the rolling ocean ; 

And, wonder upon wonder ! 
The ponderous tomb was rent in sunder ; 
And from her coffin raised, with motion 
As of wreathed cloudlets rising stilly, 
Gulnare was laid, by hands unseen, 
Like a pale rose, drooped and cliilly, 
In her white shroud, on the green. 

V. 

Were these things real ? Marvel not that he 

Who hath so loved, and, loving, lost Gulnare, 
Should but a shadow, — an abstraction be 

Of one thought only, one sole sorrow, drear 
And desolating ; with his brain all jarred 

Out of its intellectual harmony ; 

And the dim twilight of his memory, 
Grief-shaded, with but shooting meteors starred. 
It was his sad yet strangely sweet employ 
To watch that grave, over his buried Joy : 
The Beam, which lighted up his life's horizon. 
Was set and had been quenched in that dark prison ; 
The flower-like Bloom, whose breathing flushed the air 
With deep ambrosial beauty, wasted there ; 
There, shattered, with its spirit-music mute. 
Lay the frail frame of Love's one faultless Lute. 



32 GULNAEE. 

Sudden he saw her cerements yawn, 
Like a cloud by hghtning rifted, 
And her sheeted corse uplifted 

Into the starlight wan ! 
Great Mithra ! with how wild a start, 

He wakes, as from a trance ! 
But, with his pallid lips half ope, 

In agonized hope, 
Vainly he struggles to advance, , 

Or still the throbbing agony in his heart. 

VI. 

Lo ! from within a hand divided 

That column steep of falling water. 
Leaving a silver-arched portal ; 
And thence a Peri gently glided, 

And knelt before earth's pallid daughter, 
Mortality and the Immortal ! 
Beautiful was Gulnare in death : 
The lines of lovely symmetry. 
The smile of sweet serenity, 
Had fled not with her parted breath, — 
Yet say not Death can ever seem 
Like Sleep, nor that the dead can dream ! 
Blanch from the warmly sanguine rose 
The deep-felt flush wherewith it glows, 



GULNAKE. 33 

Deprive it of the sun and shower, 

Of vernal airs, of vesper dew, — 
And looks it like its rival flower, 

The white rose, in its native hue ? 
No ! that drear absence of all color 
May best beseem Death's lurid pallor ; 
And fitly pure white roses grace 
The brow of sleeping loveliness. 
How heavily those eye-lids lay, 
In Death, upon that cheek of clay ! 
While a warm light doth underpeep 
The silver sister-lids of Sleej^, 
Soft streaming thro' the jetty fringe 
That shades the cheek's transparent tinge. 
Are these the lips that, even in rest. 
Seemed ever pouting to be pressed. 
Of velvet touch, of rose-rich hue. 
Whose murmurs, melting like the dew 
Into the heart of flowers, would move. 
In slumber, as with dreams of Love ? 
From these, so cold, and pale, and thin. 
Could Death the soul of sweetness win ? 
Alas ! on that still beauteous face 

The very light of heaven falls dim ! 
Gone from the fair form glow and grace, 

How rigid is the rounded limb ! 
3 



14 GULNAKE. 

And shadows, once of golden hue, 

And full of life and charming play, 

Are there — but of a claj-cold blue ; 

And, in the darkness or the day. 
They will not pass away ! 

vn. 

O, deeply this was felt. 
When Life, in shape most spiritual and fair, 

Upon the greensward knelt. 
With lips that whispered to the lost Gulnare ! 

For no earth-shade could mar 
The pure brow or the heart of that bright Peri, 

Shining, a golden star. 
By the dead maiden, in the midnight dreary. 

vin. 

Pronounce thy mission, 
O, lovely vision 
Of Starlight, and Music, and airy grace ! 
KJieeling in this lonely place. 

With golden pinions drooping. 
And over earth's blighted blossom stooping. 
With what a soul of sorrow in thy face ! 
Divinest apparition ! say, 

O, say ! 
For unto thee doth pray 



GULNARE. 35 



The pale and voiceless phantasie, 
From his inmost heart of agon j ! 



IX. 
Hush ! restless soul of phantasie, 
And let thy heart beat silently ! 
The Peri hath knelt, and now doth press 
The maiden in a light caress, 
Kisses her mouth and forehead fair, 
And waves a myrtle wand in air, 
And gently calls, Gulnare ! Gulnare ! 
Shaken from trailing cypress-vines 
And night-blowing jessamines, 
Showers of white and crimson blooms, 

With all their perfume laden, 
Rain like stars in the purple glooms 

Over the pale, pure maiden ; 
And earth a misty cloud exhales, 

Rich with aroma, breathing 
Of many a dewy plant, 

Whose vaporous wreathing 
From vision veils 
The Spirit and its late habitant. 
The stars grow dim and disappear ; 
And the music, wailing on the ear 



36 GULNARE. 

Of phantasie, tlirougliout that trance of wonder, 
Is silenced in the muttering 

Of melancholy thunder, 
Low thunder, like the uttering 

Of a charm, that earth-cloud under. 



X. 

Often tliou has loved to mark. 

Of a hazy summer's night, 

The thin white clouds grow amber-warm 

"With the young moon's magic light, 
And melt away on the pur^^le dark 

From around her crescent form : 
Thus, with a mild light melting thro'. 
Fleeted that floating cloud of dew 
Into the night's blue depths serene, 
Where now the still stars sparkled keen ; 
And gradual from its golden screen — 

Watched with what intensity 

By straining eyes of phantasie — 
Come out a vision of delight ! 
Again appeared that Form divine. 
With features sweetly feminine, 
And fair brow almost infantine. 
But she had risen, and now upright, 



GULNARE. 37 

In stately and queenly attitude, 
A crowned Glory, before him stood ! 
And at her feet — What sees he there ? 
No trappings of the tomb. 
No form of breathless bloom. 
Nor yawning chasm ; — 
And far away the vanishing thunder rolled. 
• In the golden lull. 

What Rose above the mould, — 
Eather, what white phantasm, 
Shadow-like but beautiful, 
As if the odor of a Rose 
Had gathered shape, and hung in air. 
Slightly yet exquisitely fair. 

In the vague midnight glows ? 
This Shape — this Shade — is this Gulnare? 
This white-robed form with angel-face, 
Kneeling low in silent grace. 
As if faith and duty 

To the Peri-Queen she vows^ 
With a dim, soft beauty 

In the shadow of her brows ? 

XI. 
White her glistering garments were, 
Swaying to her slender 



38 GULNARE. 

Outline and proportions rare, 
And falling round her ankles bare 

And lier unsandalled feet, too tender 
For the damp grass and chill air ; 
And over her lucid arms so fair 
Fell, rich and warm, her lavish hair, 

With a sort of moonlight splendor 
On its dusk wave every where. 
There was no red upon her cheek ; 

Only a faint rose-color warmed 
Her pure lips, parted as to speak. 

But into blissful silence charmed. 

XII. 

Nothing the beauteous Peri said ; 
But, leaning o'er the maiden's head, 
Those silken locks, dark hyacinth, 
Did she enwreath and labyrinth 
"With pale flowers of the blue champak 
And amaranth — blooms of paradise ! 
Then lightly touched that maiden's back. 
And waved her myrtle sceptre thrice ; 
And, lo ! with lambent flickerings 
And sapphire scintillations keen, 
There sprang, expanded, from between 
Ijulnare's fair shoulders, two cerulean wings ; 



GULNARE. 39 

Silver and azure, 
And shedding celestial perfumes, 

Trembling with pleasure 
Thro' all of their sentient plumes ! 
Softly those pinions the night-breezes stirred, 

And she could not repress their up-buoyance ; 
Into the air, from her knees, Hke a bird 

She soared, in her innocent joyance ; 
And, brimful of bliss, did her hps and her eyes 

With a rapture that made them more radiant 
run over — 
" O, fly not in mercy ! " poor phantasie cries, 

As she seems in the starlight to hover. 
Fond wretch ! dost thou think that, just plumed for the 
skies. 
She will think of her pale mortal lover ? 
That, winged and warm with a new-born delight. 
She will pause for thy sake in her earth-scoring flight ? 



XIII. 

Now, with undulating motion. 

On level waves she seems to float. 
Like the Nautilus in his paper-boat 

Rocked on the rocking summer's ocean, 



40 GULNARE. 

Or the sky -lark on liis cloudy poise 
Drunken with morning's rosy joys ; 
And, with that half voluptuous grace 

"Which even virgin beauty hath, 
When, shrined in some secluded place, 

She wantons in her perfumed bath. 
Doth Gulnare, her arms flung wide, 

Breast the tliin air, like a billow 
Laving all her balmy side ; 

Then reclines, as on a pillow, 
Crossed her white arms on her breast, 

And her breathing sweet but deep. 
Her eyes half-shut in dewy rest, 

In lovely mimicry of sleep. 

XIV. 

But now indeed she stoops ; 
Each argent pinion droops ; 
And now upright, 
"With foot-falls light. 
She seems to tread some downward stair 
Hung viewless in the azure air; 

And now she doth alight 
Where the Peri, tho' with vans outspread. 
Still haunts the mourner and the dead. 



GULNARE. 41 

XY. 

The Peri's lips, that musical 
Seemed even in silence, now let fall 
From their mellifluous blooms disparted 

Accents so full-hearted. 

In such cadence sweet, 
They tingled to the very feet 
Of the younger Spirit : — 

" Let us leave 

The open air for yon wave-portal, 
That opens silvery to receive 

A sister sprite 'mid shapes immortal ; 
For, shrined therein, the path unthridden 
By human feet, there lie, far hidden 
From human eyes, high mansions fair 
As cloud-halls at the sunset are, 
Upreared by Genii prisoned there 
In time of royal Solomon. 
And there, upon his ruby throne. 
The great King- Genius doth preside 
Still, with his sceptre by his side. 
And round him earth's mysterious Powers. 
And there are gem-inwoven bowers. 
Thro' which, likes sprites of various flowers, 

The vari-colored Peris move. 
All smiles and tears, like April showers. 



42 GULNARE. 

Sweet souls of love ! 
Thy sisters these — and, 'mid those courts 
And bloom-shades, thou shalt share their sports, 

Their winsome wiles, 

And flowery toils, 
Assumed for mortal maiden's sake, 

As yet unfranchised from the Flesh. 
And, in the midst, a lucid lake, 

With milk-white sands and waters fresh. 
Expands undimpled : on its banks 

A thousand urns are set 
In order, ranks on glittering ranks 
Of crystal and of crysolite. 
Opal and massy diamond bright. 
Tho' delicate flavors mortals use 
In sparkling-sweet sherbet. 
Yet ne'er earth's flowers and fruits profuse 
Could yield for them such luscious juice 
As fills, the thirst of Joy to slake. 
Each precious urn that gems the lake. 
There, too, on all the branched trees 

Are hung many-toned music-bells. 
That, shaken by the master-breeze. 

Make minstrelsy that sinks and swells — 
For list!" 

And on the hushed night 
There rang, in musical delight, 



GULNARE. 43 

A silvery peal, a crystal chime, 

Poesie in unworded rhyme ! 

Now, near and full, and merrily, 

Those rich bells breathed of ecstasy ; 

Now, faint and far, they scarce seemed aught 

But echoes of a sweet sad thought ; — 

And, as they died along the air, 

" Haste ! " said the Peri, " They invite 

To follow" — 

Wherefore doth Gulnare 
Turn, pausing in her parting flight ? 
And why that long, long, lingering gaze 
Of love, of sorrow and deep yearning, 

Peering into vacancy 
"With eyes so tearful and so burning 
That they startle phantasie 

From his stone-amaze ? 
It is — it is — his own Gulnare ! 
Still — still to love and him she clings ! 
She pitieth his forlorn despair ! — 
And, thrillingly alive, he springs 
To clasp that shape, whose lovely brow 
Hath Love made even lovelier now ! 
In vain : he feels, in drear surprise, 

His closed arms emptied of her form : 
But o'er his brain, blinding his eyes. 

There passed a cloud of radiance warm ; 



44 GULXARE. 

And, fainting from excess of bliss, 

He only felt, with one quick start, 

A touch that thrilled him to the heart, 

Like moist lips meeting ; a soft kiss 

Pressed on his brow so damp and dim ; 

And a lighter touch in his open hand. 

That seemed to leave a perfume bland, — 
And all was night and death to him ! 

XYI. 

'Twas night, 'twas death, 'twas silence all, — 
But, no ! a bird's song musical 

That awful spell did break : 
It sang to the listening air alone ; 
For phantasie, his long vigil done. 

May nevermore awake ! 
It was the Bulbul, whose complain 
Seemed never before so full of pain ; 
A melancholy spirit crushed 
In every liquid gurgle gushed ; 
'Twas brimmed with tears. — And wherefore not? 
"What was to him the scented breeze 
Fresh from a thousand roseries, 
Since she, the loveliest and most dear 
Of all the Roses of Cashmere, 
Hath died, and left no blooming peer ? 
Therefore he haunts this burial spot. 



GULNAKE. 45 

From the green hill's mystery, 

In the very ecstasy 

Of a love-lorn agony. 

Was it a nightingale in truth ? 

For now a far diviner spirit 
Breathes in those notes, a soul that ruth 

Nor weak despondence doth inherit. 
It sings the mystery of Death, , 

Of Life in Death, Love, Anguish, Faith, 
Of clearer things than mortals deem 

Tho' born to suffer, hope — and die ! 
Tho' sleep hides its unslumbering Dream, 

Tho' Death shrouds Immortality ! 

XVII. 

'Twas morning ; — and each matin bird 
Above that place of tombs was heard ; 
Lithe lizards rustled o'er the walls ; 
Clear chimed the snow-white waterfalls ; 
The butterflies were on the wing ; 

The flowers were waving in the breeze ; ' 
The long grass-blades were glittering 

In the young sunbeams ; even the trees 
Looked gay, — those glossy cypresses, — 
So from their pyramidal tops 
The dews hung rainbow water-drops ; 



4G GULNARE. 

And in the blue air all about 
The cliildhood of the day laughed out ! 
When, stiff and cold upon the ground, 
A corse by pious hands was found, 
A corse, whose starved limbs were thin, 
With sunken cheek and sharpened chin, 
Yet — strange ! the face was that of youth. 
The beard was soft, the brow was smooth. 
Where beauty's mould and manly grace 
Decline nor death could yet efface. 
Tranquil his soul had passed away : 
For still on his pale lips a ray 

Of rapture dwelt ; upon his bosom 
One hand was pressed, and in its hold 
There bloomed a Mttle flower of gold : — 
" Kneel all in prayer ! " a Dervise old 

Exclaimed, " It is an amaranth-blossom ! 
And gently lay him down to rest : 
By angels hath his sleep been blest ! " 



EMPIRE. 



A MODERN ODE. 



I. 

'TwAS in the morning of the world, 

Shadowy with vast shapes and sublime ; 
When first was clasped Orion's band, 
Were linked the Pleiads hand in hand, 
And all the stars were choral-grand, 

In that gray prime 
Of gathering light and vapors curled ; 

II. 
Then, when the sons of God all sung 

Creation in, — a vocal chime 
Thy verse rings yet, sublimest Job ! 
When rounded, with aerial robe 
And land and sea, the vernal globe, 

With crisp March rime 
And April rain all bright and young, — 



48 EMPIRE. 

in. 

God made man monarch of the earth ; 

And, in the dawning of the day, 
The Star of Empire rose : its beams 
Smote first on oriental streams, 
Which, flashing with purpureal gleams, 

"Westward away, 
To blight or bless, flowed widening forth. 

IV. 

They swelled, — then shrank, and were no more ; 

Egypt and Asser, Greece and Rome : 
These History's silent Muse recounts. 
But still the Star of Empire mounts. 
Still westering touches other founts. 

That shall become 
Seas, — oceans, — surged the wide world o'er. 

V. 

Time on one long parabola rolls 

Among the eternal spheres, — a wheel, 
Whose countless revolutions are 
Earth's crowded cycles : thus that Star, 
Thro' years revolving regular. 
While empires reel, 
Holds westward on for grander goals. 



EMPIRE. 49' 

VI. 

Now morning guns from fortress-points 

Speak England's lianglity flag unfurled ;• 
With drums, with trump, from deck and troop ; 
Fresh tones of power rolling up 
Ere echo dies ; rolled like a hoop 

Around the world : 
That power a serpent's unlocked joints. 

VII. 
A transatlantic empire rears 

Her front all-glorious in the ascendant. 
At Freedom's birth, the bold, the strong. 
Again the stars of morning throng, 
Again swells out their triumph-song, 

Emblazed resplendent 
"VYliere in the storm their standard flares. 

VIII. 
And, Danae-bosomed, lo ! with air 

Sumptuous in large-orbed vanity, 
The far west hails our youngest star ! 
Shall faction now sound notes of war ? 
What ! will ye let dissension mar 

The destiny, 
The promise of Mount Pisgah there ? 
4 



50 EMPIRE. 

IX. 

Enough — no more on fears I ponder, 

Drowned remote murmurs in my sense, 
As, California, on thy shore 
I see the stormy billows pour, 
Rapt as I hear in all the uproar 

Omnipotence — 
A crashing might that dwarfs the thunder ! 

X. 

I dream of power superbly regal. 

Of moral empire south and north. 
Of law hand-locked with liberty, 
.Skill, wisdom, genius, energy, — 
Yea, the great nineteenth century. 

Here going forth 
On wings of our invincible eagle ! 

XI. 

'Tis not, young Empire of the West, 

Because thy snow-sierras hide 
Huge crystalled rocks of virgin gold, 
Adown the abrading torrents rolled. 
In lucid streams, by summer shoaled, 

A golden tide ; 
'Tis not for "'cultural wealth possessed ; 



EMPIRE. 51 

XII. 

Grain golden over liill and plain ; 

'Tis not for these, Time's latest-born, 
We hail thine advent; but because 
Great chartered rights, the world's applause. 
Unequalled language, letters, laws. 

Stamp and adorn 
Thy State, Anglo-American ; 

XIII. 
Because our large democracy 

Hath here fresh scope — self-government 
New monuments — the pregnant thought 
Our su'es in their great hearts had wrought. 
When they with crowned prerogative fought. 

By precedent 
Blasphemer of God's majesty ! 

XIV. 
That Science — as a fulcrum — might, 

To move the mental world, plant here 
The lever of Archimedes ; 
Science, that may, from sjanpathies 
Magnetic, electricities. 

Earth's fluids rare. 
The mystery solve of life and light ; 



52 EMPIRE. 

XV. 

Because the various sister-arts 

New homes, new temples, here may find ; 
And, in the progress of the time. 
Verse ampler, nobler, more sublime, 
111 radiant orbs of rolling rhyme. 

May shake mankind 
With truths — commanding minds and hearts 

XVI. 

And now, beside the surging wave, 

My pulses throb with power, till seem 
Skies gathering sound up like a gong ! 
Hark ! where the ocean-chariots throng, 
Thundering on iron wheels along — 

Thy strength, steam. 
Chained to the oar, man's galley-slave ! 

XVII. 

White-canvassed all the wide Pacific, 

Hark in high shrouds the pipmg breeze ! 
Sail on — boom on — thou stately fleet, 
By air propelled or vapormg heat. 
Still westward on, till ye complete. 

All round the seas, 
A boundless empire beatific ; 



EMPIRE. 53 

xvm. 

A world-wide federation, free, 

Fraternal, pillared strong on facts. 
With faith in Heaven, and faith in man, 
Arched over, and of infinite span, 
Till sleep-eyed China and Japan 

To thoughts and acts 
Shall waken in the ripe To-be. 

XIX. 

Where emigration's lumbering waggons 

Toil o'er the continent, behold 
The future : wastes that peopled are. 
Resounding rails thronged car on car, 
Drawn into one the near and far. 

The new and old. 
Devoured the path by fiery dragons ! 

XX. 

Matter to mind so sensitive 

That, strike one thought in any place, 
An instant Hghtning-wire vibrates 
From Eastport to the Golden Gates ; 
A land where love annihilates 
Both time and space, 
With sympathetic throbs alive. 



54 ' EMPIRE. 

XXI. 

Beacons tlie goal : thou wilt not lag 

In lists Olympic, mettled State ! 
Potential shall thy progress be, 
If true to thine own destiny, 
True to both Hope and Memory, 

The Union great, 
Our country's faith, our country's flag. 

XXII. 

Flag of the Thirteen, Thirty-One — 

The glittering number now reversed — 
Ye Stars, in Union lovely, white 
Forever with untarnished light. 
Calm in consolidated might — 

O, float, as erst, 
With you above, was victory won ! 

xxni. 

Our fathers brake the tyrant's gyves. 
But forged for us a chain of love ; 
Revered, while God sees ye are good. 
Peace, Independence, Brotherhood ; 
"^hile Bunker's Hill and Yorktown blood 

Our hearts can move ; 
While memory of Mount Yernon lives ! 



THE CORCOYADO. 



Oft had I visited this splendid Bay, 
Or River of January, so miscalled 
By the old voyagers, who deemed that here 
Some mighty stream, rivalling the Amazon, 
Emptied its wealth of waters ; oft my fancy 
Had soared to the Sublime, scaling the heights 
Around me, with all Beauty at its feet : 
But I had been content, with bodily foot 
Planted upon no loftier pinnacle 
Than the shij^'s deck, to gaze, not undelighted, 
Upon this lucid harbor-sheet, embosomed 
In its sweet zone of hills, so wild and lovely 
That Nature seems, in her most frolic mood, 
To have shaped out and richly pranked them forth, 
Lavish of light and generous with her green. 

Now, more aspiring, I have wearily toiled 
Up the steep bed of mountain streams, beside- 



56 THE CORCOVADO. 

The gray-mossed aqueduct, thro' forests dense 

Shut from the wind but open to the sun, 

"With limbs grown languid and quick-panted breathing ; 

And I have reached the topmost crag which crowns 

The CoRCOVADO : its peculiar peak. 

Seen from below, with one precipitous side, 

Not all unlike a superincumbent billow 

Walled up against the shore in act to break, — 

So pausing " on the curl " forevermore. 

But here, on its high summit all-commanding, 

What view is mine ? Alas ! a blinding mist. 

Is all, which, swept from seaward by the breeze, 

Foldeth the mountain in its white cloud-fleeces. 

There is a heavy sound upon the wind. 

Whether from over, under, or around, 

A roaring like the noise of many waters, 

A roll like thunders long reverberate, 

Filling the wide air with sustained pealing. 

As did Ixion, in the Grecian fable, 

I have stretched forth my hand to clasp a Goddess, 

.'Seeking and yearning for the Beautiful 

Hn its divinest essence, — and I meet 

'The embraces of a cloud ; — and angry Jove 

'Threatens with the loud thunder all the while ! 



THE CORCOVADO. 57 

The passing thought fleets with the passing cloud, 
"Wliich travels mland, riding on the wind, — 
And, lo ! the blue Atlantic, breaking white 
Upon the white-beached mainland and the islands, 
With a long roll and a loud roar, — in chorus 
Booming the mighty multitudinous Deep ! 
All lesser tumult heard not at this height, 
I listen to the voice of sovereign Power ; ' 

Power, the majestic, the unchainable, 
The infinite and eternal Power of God ! 
Here speaks it ever. — But how solemnly 
Is the primeval and enduring Force 
Of all things stamped on these insensate cliffs ! 
There was a time, when, silent as they stand. 
Hard now and steadfast, chaos rocked and raged. 
And they, with fierce heat liquid, were upheaved 
Into these forms fantastic : so convulsed 
Was never Ocean in his stormiest hour. 
The lapsing ages leave them as they are, 
Eeveahng yet Earth's strong original frame. 
But showing, too, how Strength is loved of Beauty, 
Whose gentler spirit, like a younger Nature, 
Doth, with caressing tendrils clasping it. 
Make, as Love ever doth, its object lovely : 
Hebe had bound, with rosy-taj^er fingers, 
A chaplet thus on brows of Hercules : 



58 THE CORCOVADO. 

So dotli a childish sister love to sport 
With a stern elder, dear to her withal : 
The very rocks, the great rocks ramparting 
The dusk ravines, are, by her summer breath, 
Made gay, laughing out into lustrous flowers ; 
And all the massy tropical foliage 
Glows, in her sunlight, of so glad a green 
It welcometh the wanderer from the sea 
With the warm welcome of a loved one's smile ! 

With Youth and Morning, from the smoking crater 
Of dark Vesuvius, I have seen the sun 
Rise diamond-clear upon thy rosy sea, 
Thy mountain-islands and romantic shores, 
O Naples, beautiful in boyish dreams ! 
Disparagement seems sacrilege to thee. 
And thy domains, divine Paethenope ! 
Yet may the New World claim fair rivalry. 
Her birth-right, dowered by the Beautiful, 
As here, with such exuberant natural charms 
They need no other ornament, and ask 
No interest borrowed from the storied past. 
What tho' no monuments nor memories. 
No mythic legend and no ethnic verse. 
Haunt land and sea, and hallow all the air ? 
Lo ! down this precipice I could drop the plummet 



THE CORCOYADO. 59 

Into a bay surpassing Baia, 
By Virgil lined with his Elysian Fields : 
There, where its beauty nestles in the mountains, 
Gardens are mapped beneath me, dark and rich 
"With bowers, wherein no Queen of old Romance 
Hath woven enchantments and no antique Grace 
Breathed sanctity, yet to whose bloomy shades 
Dear Nature, visioned like Egeria, 
Might come, tho' universal as the air. 
And look into the heart of him who loved her 
"VYith a peculiar smile for him alone : 
There, in the mountam-shadows glossy green, 
Undimpled as the face of quiet thought. 
Its waters scarcely crisp enough to mark 
Their margin on the silver-sanded shore, 
And the ear catches not their cadencing — 
Sweet bay of Botofogo ! Far away, 
Yon Organ Mountains, — thro' whose pipes stupen- 
dous. 
Shooting up miles into the cloudless ether. 
Nature might swell eternal anthem-music 
To the beneficent Heaven, — with what superb 
Disdain would they o'erlook the Apennines ! 
Capri and Ischia — what are they to these 
Islands and towery isolations round me, 
At once so picturesque and so imposing ? 



GO THE CORCOVADO. 

Earth lias no equal, glorious as tliou art, 

Sea of the Siren ! to this ocean-flood, 

Rolled up among the mountains and the hills ; 

Sweeping into deep coves with sheltering headlands, 

With long curves of white beach and creamy foam ; 

Its whole broad surface Hke a shield of silver; 

A noble shield, large as the giant-gods, 

Who, climbing Heaven, piled Pelion upon Ossa, 

Might have upheld ; a glittering shield, embossed 

With massive emeralds ; such those linked hills 

And lovely isles seem in their gem-like green. 

Upon its bosom the tall thronging ships 

Show like a fleet of their own boats at anchor ; 

And, on its shores, the imperial capital 

Of the Brazils is dwarfed so by the distance 

It might beseem the court of Lilliput, 

A populous ant-hill metropolitan : 

Yet scarce less spacious the still waters seem 

Than when I viewed them from the ship or shore, 

Tho' from this lofty rock o'erlooking them, 

O'erlooking with the mountains — my compeers ! 

Yea, in the exaltation of my thought. 
And actual elevation, these huge piles 
Of senseless granite look like things of life, 
And I am of them — they are my compeers ! 



THE CORCOVADO. 6^ 

I drink in sometliin» of the stronor delight 
Which plumes the eagle, drinking of the morning, 
Ere, soaring upward from his rock-built ejrie, 
He melts awaj, a star into the sunlight. 
And I can fancy winged Mercury, 
When, having stolen Jove's sceptre for a time, 
He lords it from the top of high Olympus, — 
The Universe beneath his feathered heel ! 

Long shall my sense of ampler being, long 
This interfusion with subhmer things 
And this perception of diviner power 
Than oft are given us, hve within my soul ! 
Long shall this grandeur live upon my eye. 
When, with its imagery magnificent. 
Its shadows broad and sunbright colorings. 
The panorama shall have passed away ! 

And yet, O, why — as, with the waterfalls, 
From rock to rock the timbered steep descending — 
Wliy should I wish to linger ? why regret 
The prospect seen a moment and no more ? 
'Tis well that moment, so sublimed, should stand 
A high peak on the shores of Memory : — 
But who would dwell upon the mountain top 
Forever ? Who would thi'one a life-long joy 



62 THE CORCOVADO. 

Above communion with his fellow men ? 

Even the imagination, magnified 

Into the mightiness of all it saw, 

Which hath sustained the transports of my verse, 

How often has it stooped for images 

Of love and sweetest pleasure to the valleys. 

The modest valleys, and the lowlier hills ! 

Then welcome back, — a brief space breathing free 

Above the circle of humanity, — 

Welcome its burthen back upon the heart, 

Welcome its cares and sorrows, so they bring 

Back with them its endearing sympathies, 

With all life's duties its affections too. 

Which bind, however various, each to each, 

The graceful and the rude of soul, with ties 

Like the sweet-breathing tangles of the vine. 

The mind may oversoar the sunward summit, 
An eagle ; — only kin to kingliest birds 
In its ambition is the intellect : — 
But not the less doth the heart choose to nestle, 
A dove domestic, m the shaded glen. 
If Love be amorous of solitude, 
'Tis not the solitary height, but rather 
The secret grove and wave-secluded isle. 
Ah, yes ! one little islet of the many 



THE CORCOVADO. 68 

Seen from tlie eminence studding all the bay- 
Were sphere enough for me, if only thou, 
Beloved, under this un-wintered sky, 
Wert with me. On the mount the spirit's pride. 
Exulting in the consciousness of power. 
Would not delight thee long : grand harmonies 
Soon grow oppressive to the mind attuned 
To feeling's simpler melody, which calls 
From thy young nature all its grace, its truth, 
Its softer excellences, its mild devotion, 
Its dearer and diviner traits of Woman. 
If thou wert here, and thou wert all mine own ; 
Thou, who, a vestal o'er a sacred flame, 
Keepest the inspirations of thy heart 
Forever warm and pure, to light alone 
The home which doth enshrine thee ; thou, whose 

eyes,— 
Those eyes, as blue as the Forget-me-not, 
Which never, never are forgotten, — look. 
In every glance thy spotless soul shines thro', 
More poetry than I could ever write ; 
Thou, for whom love is worship, happy, holy, 
If thou wert by my side, then would I murmur. 
Or Love would murmur for me — Come, O, come ! 
Be not the mist-shape by the mountain-torrent 
Sent up, an airy form impalpable, 



64: THE CORCOVADO. 

An apparition ; but be thou, the rather, 

The wave itself, the wave, with tripping feet, 

Down dancing to the meadows, — come, sweet, come 

And float with me to that fair islet-shore ! 

A gale of fragrance doth invite thee, — come ! 

The broad-leaved plantain and the cocoa-palm 

Shall fan thee when the breeze sets in from sea ; 

And it shall shed the scented orange-blossoms, 

A bridal wreath unwoven, upon thy head ; 

Those blossoms that so well adorn a bride. 

White as the thoughts of maiden innocence, 

Pure white, save, centred in the heart of each, 

A golden promise of fruition sweet. 

Upon the flowers the flower-winged butterflies 

Hanging voluptuously ; there, feasting too 

On their ambrosia, tiniest humming-birds, 

With forms more gorgeous even, gold-green or purple. 

Their winglets twinkling with quick ecstasy ; 

And, it may be, a Bird of Paradise, 

Sweepmg the woods with starry tram superb ; — 

These, dearest, we will deem the actual Fays 

And the Queen-Sylphid of our faery isle. 

Come : we will dwell there till the very lizards, 

So imiocent and graceful in the grass, 

Shall look upon thee with less timorous eyes. 

Beyond the magic circle traced by Love, 



THE CORCOVADO. 65 

The arch-enchanter, lowly tho' it be, 
We will not care to rise, fearful lest he, 
In loftier atmospheres, should something lose 
Of that which was his s^dcII and charm for us. 
The tenderness of woman, is no star 
Pinnacled in the void : it is a flower 
Blooming beside us, in the bosom worn ; 
Endued with, star-hke radiance indeed. 
But, in its fragrancv, a simple flower. 

So we will be the better pleased to have 
These precincts the horizon of our view 
Than be possessed of vision's largest range 
That ever earthly altitude commanded. 
Or if W' e look abroad, at morn or even, 
"\Yhen fade or flush the far blue mountain-cones- 
And starry points, alike to us shall seem, 
With satisfied and unambitious hearts, 
The phases of the planet in its sphere, 
The CoRCOVADO changing with the sky.. 
5 



A SABBATH EVENING AT SEA. 



•*' lo mi Tolsi a man distra e posi mente 
Air altro polo e vidi quattro stelle 
Non viste fuor ch' alia prima gente. 

■" Goder parca lo ciel di lor fiameUe 
settentrional Tcdoro sito 
Poi che private se' di mirar quelle." * 

Dante. 

Make us ever mindful of the time when we shall lie down in the dust." 

Common Praytr, 



O SAILOR, gliding on the lonely ocean, 
Be tliy lieart holy ! For the parting Sabbath, 
With a gold-halo and calm benediction, 
Dies, like a saint in fiery martyrdom. 



*" I turned me to the right ; my spirit flew 

To the other pole : four stars shone sweetly hright 
Ne"er seen but by the primal privileged few. 

*' The heavens seemed revelhng in their glorious light ; 
desolate North I thy melancholy clime 
Looked never on their gladdening ray sublime." 



A SABBATH EVENING AT SEA. 67 

n. 

Like Faith, the lovely star of lucid evenings 
As the night darkens more divinely flushes ; 
And — a long radiance rippling on the water — 
Slow, from the east, up-whitens the round moon. 

m. 

There are no isles of beauty beatific, 
Nor angel-forms, along the level moonlight. 
Which leads to nothing; — yet thou dream'st, while 

gazing, 
Of the straight path and pure, leading to life. 

IV. 

Dim constellations, veikd by mists of silver. 
Leave great Orion lord^^ in the zenith ; 
And, far toward the Antarctic pole, uprighting, 
Lo ! the four splendors of the Southern Cross I 



V. 

To you, ye Stars, that, ranged in mystic order, 
Symbol the infinite Love, the crowning Passioa 
Of the incarnate God and his ascension. 
How turned the early voyagers for the Line : 



6:8 A SABBATH EVENING AT SEA. 

VI. 

From the cold North, which ye have ghaddened never, 
Still deepening on these spheres of warm, dark azure, 
Till ye burst forth, — how turned they, bending lowly, 
With child-like wonder and large faith, to you ! 



VII. 

Then first the deep air, hushed in adoration, 
Listened the name, which, breathing Beauty ever, 
Doth syllable its music into Mary, 
As to the Virgin vesper-Aves rose. 



VIII. 

To Mary, Star of the Sea ! for so they styled her. 
So worshipped, erringly but most devoutly : 
Adventure high had made them earnest-hearted — 
And thou, young Mariner, thy thoughts are grave. 



IX. 

Thy mind, perchance, has no sharp, salient sorrows 
But a half-tearful shade of melancholy 
Is over all : thine eyes are on the water ; 
Thy heart is in thy dear home far away. 



A SABBATH EVENING AT SEA. 69 

X. 

And Memory brings thee, ringing musically, 
The sound of church-bells, all the air refreshing, 
Like dew besprinkled — here — where no chime silvery 
Nor soft dew ever blessed the barren brine. 

XI. 

The air is silent ; but the waves, low plashing 
Against the vessel's side, o'er which thou leanest, 
Talk to thee : so dear woman's loving prattle 
Flows, with sweet meanings for the heart alone. 

XII. 
But the night deepens on the gold-green twilight, 
Dark and divine, thro' all his starry heavens ! 
More and more luminous, like sliding meteors, 
The blue waves crisp into a creamy white. 

XIII. 

Closing thine eyes, ere the foam-corruscations 
Cease dazzling, — child-like rocked in ocean's cradle, — 
Pray to be never of the time unmindful 
When thou shalt lie down dreamless in the deep ! 



TO THE ALBATROSS 



When the serried storm is stirring, 

Like a warrior host from sleep, 
And the vanward winds are skirring 

Over all the moaning deep ; 
When the throned Thunder, dwelling 

In deep shadow, shakes the sky. 
And the Ocean's breast is swelling 

Into billows, mountains-high ; 
Where the Stormy Spirit, keeping 

His lone watch about the Cape, 
On the doomed bark is sweeping 

Gales and mists of ghostly shape : - 
Bird of broad and buoyant pinion ! 

Thou art soaring on the blast ; 
For a home, for a dominion. 

The tremendous main thou hast ; 



TO THE ALBATROSS. 71 

In the elements' commotion 

Sharest thou, with hoarse delight ; 
Mountained or abyssed, the ocean 

Rolling with thee in thj flight. 
Fitful now thy form is flashing 

Thro' the tempest's lowering gloom, 
Where thy white breast thou art washing 

In the whiter tossing foam. 
Earth — its bloom and beauty — never 

Has been visited by thee ; 
But thy stormy ways will ever 

Be upon the barren sea. 
Is thy life unlike to ours, 

Creature of the wind and wave ? 
Braving every blast that lowers, 

Ocean is the sailor's grave ! 



LINES ON THE DEATH OF COMMANDER 
WILLIAM BOERUM, U.S.N. 



I. 

No funeral pomp his corse entombs ; 
No arms reversed and marshalled column, 
Half-masted flags, nor muffled drums 
To beat the dead-march solemn, 
Nor deep boom of the minute-gun, 
Nor quick, sharp volleys o'er him fired, 
Proclaim unto the world that one 
Known to his country has expired; 
Whose pennant floated in command 
High o'er a gallant ship of war, 
O'er many a sea, to many a land, 
Bearing Columbia's flag afar : — 
Till here, on eastern Afric's coast, 
That ship — that proud command — is lost ; 
And he shall ne'er return to tell 
The thrilling tale of what befell ! 
# 



ox THE DEATH OF COMMANDER BOERUM. 73 
II. 

Mourn for your chief, O sailors, mourn, 

Ye who so loved him and respected ! 

And mourn for those he leaves forlorn — 

Wo, yet how unexpected ! 

To them — whose anguish words but mock — 

This startling missive will be sent. 

As bursts the electric lightning-shock 

From a serene-blue firmament ! 

A wife — a daughter, young and fair — 

Trace not the Future's picture there ! 

Yet awful seems the unconsciousness 

Which shields them now from all distress ; 

Dreaming, that in the hours to come 

They welcome the dear wanderer home, 

Dear, in his arms or by his side, 

A husband's love — a father's pride ! 

III. 

The first break of the day — for him 
Charged with a doom so melancholy — 
Upon the scene looked gray and dim. 
Dappling the darkness slowly : 
When in a boat, whose timbers frail 
Shook at the hungry breaker's roar, 
He steered for, — with a flowing sail, — 
The just-disclosed, dark-jungled shore; 



74 ON THE DEATH OF 

And, bj the dawning's glimmering ray, 
Saw, like a white cloud, under way 
His lofty ship ; and high hopes ride. 
Winged with the wind, the waters wide ! 
He's heeded not the sounds, which spoke 
His peril on the mural bar, — 
Green walls of waves, that, toppling, broke 
In vast white foam, flattening afar. 

IV. 

The surf has now received the boat — 

How fast those rollers overtake her ! 

A moment more — and she's afloat. 

Keel upward, in the breaker ! 

Her crew cling 'mid the waters rough, 

With beating heart and desperate hold : 

Some shall be saved — but Avho swept off? 

O, him that fl^rst fierce surge has rolled 

Into eternity — the wave 

Has settled o'er a sailor's grave ! 

Or if a morrow shall exhume 

His body from its depths of gloom ; 

A lone, dark object on the sea : 

There shall the shark, the gannet be, 

To desecrate with jaw and beak. 

Sullen to dive, or soar and shriek ! 



COMMANDER BOERUM. 75 

V. 

Ah me ! there has been many a breast, 

That beat with chivah-ous emotion, 

For finned and winged things a feast 

Upon the buoyant ocean I 

No church-yard grave, no carved stone, 

Is theirs, where Sorrow loves to brood, 

A holy death so gently shown 

That the wild heart must grow subdued ; — 

But o'er their fate there aye shall be 

A horror and a mystery ! 

Mysterious, unsounded Deep, 

Thy secrets shall not always sleep ! 

Yet shalt thou, in thine azure pomp, 

Roll on, while shines the sun on high, • 

Till, at the archangel's signal-tromp. 

Earth's funeral fires thy bed shall dry ! 

YI. 

No more shall our commander tread 
Alive his vessel's quarter-deck : 
He is among the ocean's dead — 
She an inglorious wreck ! 
No more shall she, athwart the sea. 
Shoot, like a meteor, thro' the storm ; 
No more the deep, in glassy sleep. 
Reflect her warlike form : 



76 ON THE DEATH OF COMMANDER BOEKUM. 

Condemned, as all unfit to dare 
The wayward moods of sea and air, 
And on the strand left, rotting dry- 
Beneath the hot Mozambique sky ; 
Unless some lifting freshet there 
Wash her to sea — a happier doom — 
And the red lightning's tempest-glare 
Her sinkiuGf deck illume ! 



VII. 

Dismantled of her guns and spars, 

All that had given her life departed. 

The saddest sight beneath the stars, 

She lies — a ship deserted ! 

O, happy we ! the dawn of Home 

Ere long shall glad our gloomy eyes : 

But oft as there the black wave's foam 

Like corpse-lights glares at the moon-rise. 

When gusts, in hollow voices, moan 

Their dirges round that vessel lone, — 

A spectral form shall darkly seem. 

Darkly as thro' a glassy dream. 

To pace — so murdered ghosts their heath — 

The deck o'er which he had presided : 

From his command, in life and death. 

He has not been divided ! 



THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR. 



" Land, ho ! " how welcome was the voice, 

Which bade, as forth its tidings went, 
The deeps of sea and air rejoice 
For a new element ! 

And lightly did our spirits leap ! 
Beautiful is the rise of Earth 
Up from the bosom of the deep, 
As at Creation's birth ! 

'Twas land — but no accustomed coast 
That woke such feelings of delight ; 
For now, the wide Atlantic crossed, 
The Old World met the sight. 

The lofty ship went booming on. 

With full sails swelling gloriously ; 
And, long before the day was gone. 
There rose up near and high 



THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR. 

Spain — land of cliivalry and romance — 

Whose maidens erst, with dark-bright eyes, 
Looked down upon the spUntered lance, 
And gave the victor's prize. 

Proud Spain — which sent the Armada forth, 

Magnificent but evil-starred. 
Against an island of the north. 

For whom the tempest warred. 

Tho' once the mistress of vthe world, 

Her far-off provinces Perus, 
Before that island's flag unfurled 

Doomed pomp and power to lose. 

"Where Andalusia's green hills slope, 

The eye could just behold afar 
The column — with the telescope — 
Which stands on Trafalgar. 

There last the Spanish ensign flew 

In war, while nations thronged the sea, 
Which Nelson's prowess overthrew 
In his death-victory ! 



THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR. 79 

As fast we swept thro' Calpe's strait — 

A continent on either hand — 
"VYe saw, like guardians of the gate, 
The mountain-monsters stand. 

While greenly swelled the Spanish shore, — 

Sun-burnt and steep, upon the right, 
Appeared the mountains of the Moor, 
Bare with primeval blight. 

And, far in the interior, 

Old Atlas propped the leaning sky, 
Wearing upon his shoulders hoar 
A snowy drapery. 

The sun set — and an instant's shock 

Told that the ship was anchored now 
Within the shadow of the Rock — 
Beneath the Lion's brow ! 

Thus opening on that glooming sea. 

Well seemed these walls the ends of earth : 
Death and a dark eternity 

Subhmely symboUed forth ! 



80 THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR. 

Ere to one eagle soul was given 

The will — the wings — that deep to brave; 
In the Sim's path to find a heaven — 

A New World — o'er the wave ! 

Retraced the path Columbus trod, 

Our course was from the setting sun : 
While all the visible works of God, 
Tho' various else, had one — 

One westward and unwearying march : 

The crowned Day from morn till even ; 
From east to west, in night's great arch, 
The starry host of Heaven ! 

And aye, as Europe's lights grow dim, 

May thine in the ascendant be, 
I sing, as swells our martial hymn, 
America, to thee ! 



THE CASTLE OF AL WALED. 



Upon Gibraltar's steep ascent there stands 
A castled ruin, built when first the Moor 
Crossed conqueror to the European shore, — 
Dashed helmed knighthood by his turbaned bands. 
No longer from its height the pile commands 
The face of the collossal Eock ; but tower, 
And gate, and partial battlements, tho' hoar. 
Are massive-standing ; while the builders' hands 
A thousand years ago were dust ! The brunt 
Of battle bearing, scores of shot and shell 
Show the endurance in the old time wont. 
What thronged romances in my bosom swell, 
Once haughty fortress of the infidel, 
O palpable millennium, front to front ! 



THE APPROACH TO MARSEILLES. 



J. GAZE on mountains gray ; and they enhance 
The charms of lowHer hills, gentle and green, 
White suburbs 'mid the terraced vineyards seen, 
.All in the sunny south of beautiful France ! 

Land of the troubadour, fair Provence ! 

I hear the serenade — I see the Queen 
•Of Beauty listening from her lattice lean ; 

And moonbeams on her minstrel's armor glance ! 

The scene is changed : — and, lo ! of later days, 

Liberty's lurid dawn, crimsoned with crime ! 

But, prescient of a more majestic time. 

Outs wells the war-hymn of the Marseillaise ; 

As, caught up by ten thousand voices, erst, 
^n some still night its thunder-music burst ! 



THE ALPS. 



I HAD just risen from the page, whose story 

"Was of the Carthaginian conqueror ; 

And, as on Genoa's gulf, the verdant shore 

Advanced in many a rounded promontory, 

I saw the self-same Alps on huge Alps hoary, 

O'er which — as did his late compeer in war — 

He passed in pomp — two thousand years before — 

And won a mural crown of towering glory ! 

They stood, in their sublime Reality, 

Before me, lifting to the lofty sky, 

And in the immaculate sunset-hues of even. 

Their summits — cloud-Hke and colossal things 

Embodying forth such grand imaginings 

As overshadow Earth and have their heights in Heaven ! 



GENOA. 



Gently, as roses die, the day declines ; 

On the charmed air there is a hush the while ; 

And delicate are the twilight-tints that smile 

Upon the summits of the Apennines. 

The moon is up ; — and o'er the warm wave shines 

A faery bridge of light, Avhose beams beguile 

The fancy to some far and Fortunate isle. 

Which Love in solitude unlonely shrines. 

The blue night of Italian summer glooms 

Around us ; over the crystalline swell 

I gaze on Genoa's spires and palace-domes : 

City of cities the Superb, Farewell ! 

The Beautiful, in Nature's bloom, is thine ; 

And Art hath made it deathless and divine ! 



PISA. 



Once populous Pisa ! in its lifeless streets, 
Echo, the clang of startled Solitude, 
Scares Silence, cowering o'er his famished brood ; 
And, lingering ghost-like round its ancient seats, 
The mournful shade of past magnificence meets 
The gaze of him whose idle steps intrude. 
Etruria's pride, the classic Arno's flood, 
Glides thro' the midst ; and in its glass repeats 
The bridges spanning it. Not many rods 
From the broad river, in a grass-grown square, 
I saw the still ornate Duomo ; there 
The Belfrej-tower o'er its foundation nods : 
I trod the Campo Santo, where the great 
Of former time sleep urned in solemn state- 



NAPLES, 



Delightful city of Parthenope, 

Still the soft airs that fan thee seem enchanted ; 

By Song and Beauty crescent shores still haunted 

Along thy bright bay, once the Siren's sea ! 

Well I remember, gazing now on thee, 

The wishful dreams, with which my childhood panted, 

Of charms, in volumes of dumb Latin vaunted, 

Or vowelled in rich Italian melody. 

From Capri's rocky isle, where ruins gray 

The memory of the first proud Cesars rear, 

To where Misenum overlooks the bay — 

Rome's galley-navy used to anchor near — 

The shades of yore, the lights of yesterday. 

Hallow each wall, and wave, and headland here ! 



VESUVIUS 



But, lo ! the Burning Mountain's lava cone 

Fills up the vision ! Ever does it breathe 

From its hot chasms thick sulphur-clouds, which wreathe 

Its summit when the still air is unblown. 

Mid-height, the mount, with luscious grape o'ergrown, 

Swarms with live villages ; while underneath 

The surface do the no less live flames seethe 

The Titan's heart ; convulsed agony shown 

In quake and rending of the solid earth ! 

Not seldom, with a throe more terrible. 

He bursts his bonds, and blazes armed forth 

With vengeance engined in his lurid Hell ! 

Beautiful in thy play, Spirit of Fire, 

Mountains may crush not thine unconquerable ire I 



NIGHT AND MORNING ON VESUVIUS. 



O, NEVER has the strength of the Sublime, 

"With sweep resistless as the torrent's roll 

Or stormy tides, so borne aloft my soul, 

As when, the dark hour ere the morning-prime, 

Having, by torch and stars, essayed to climb 

Vesuvius, I attained the lofty goal ; 

And thought. Dread Mount, that thou, in chafed control, 

Wert like hot bosoms, wherein darkles crime 

Ajid smothered passion. Lo ! in diamond 

And gold, the sun-steeds pace Heaven's eastern hall ; 

There seems to wave some mighty magic wand, 

And the Campania opens at the call, — 

Felicitous fields, city and bay beyond, 

And, east and south, a misty mountain wall ! 



POMPEII. 



I TROD old footprints in their streets, their halls — 

The people of Pompeii ! and I heard, — 

As, along pillared vistas, light winds stirred 

The natural-leafed Corinthian capitals, — 

Rustlings, like wide-waved skirts, and plaintive calls 

And answers, as tho' gods were disinterred 

"With these, their antique altars, sepulchred 

Long as the Cesars. How came perfect walls 

Of fresco thus unroofed? As falls the foot 

On rich mosaic, in domestic courts, 

The marble echo, with vain Reason sports : 

The Lares all too vivid to be mute ! 

Plash on, fount — they told me thou wast dried ! 

Was thine that lyre, lone ? — Glaucus calls his bride ! 



POSILIPO. 



We seek, as twiliglit saddens into gloom, 

A poet's sepulchre ; and here it is — 

The summit of a tufa precipice. 

Ah ! precious every drape of myrtle bloom 

And leaf of laurel crowning Virgil's tomb ! 

The low vault entering, hark ! what sound is this ? 

The night is black beneath us in the abyss, 

Thro' one damp port disclosed, as from Earth's womb, 

That rumbling sound appals us ! Thro' the steep 

Is hewn Posilipo's most marvellous grot ; 

And to the prince of Roman bards, whose sleep 

Is in this singular and lonely spot. 

Doth a wild rumor give a wizard's name. 

Linking a tunnelled road to Maro's fame ! 



CADIZ 



Fair Cadiz, with tliy wall of whitest stone, 

Thy graceful mansions more than marble white, 

Art thou a city of alabaster bright, 

Hewn from one rock ? From the Czarina flown 

Are icy palaces these ? But, like thine own 

Queen votive rising, ravishing the sight. 

From ocean, — hail, O Summer of Delight, 

Loosed for no frost-couch the voluptuous zone ! 

Dangerous the blush of Andalusian even 

To youth, that on thine Alameda loiters, 

Where, warm as Houris of an eastern heaven. 

Thro' flower-walks undulate thy dark-eyed daughters, 

A glow more mantling by the sea-breeze given, 

As Love's sweet star stoops rosy to the conscious waters ! 



THE FARNESIAN HERCULES. 

" Invicti membra Glyconis." 

Horace. 

ix the museum borbonico, naples. 



Calm in the consciousness of supreme strength, 

Of mighty labors done — their own reward — 

The statue stands, revealing in their length 

The invincible limbs of Glycon : so the bard. 

From him who conquered here the marble hard 

Into Arch- Victory, the work described. 

Great, even as the demigod he dared 

To chisel, was the artist : he imbibed 

An inspiration, falling like a shower, 

The pure Sublime, and shaped it without fault ; 

And, swelling every sinewy limb, the Power, 

Breathed from the sculpture, serves alike to exalt 

Appreciation of what true Art can, 

And all that Nature makes divine in man ! 



THE VENUS CALLIPYGE 



IN THE MUSEUM BORBOXICO, NAPLES. 



Spirit, unborn and undying, thy presence 
Shadoweth forth a sublimer sphere : 

Of Beauty and Love the immaculate essence. 
Which men and immortals alike revere ! 

Thou, in the minds of the ancients, haunting 
A fancy, most lovely, if hardly chaste, 

Gavest a charm that to earth was wanting 

In the Venus by whom their faith was graced. 

Shapes of Beauty they had, which awed us, 
Shapes of Beauty, austere and cold — 

O, how unlike their voluptuous goddess. 
Cast by Love in his softest mould ! 



94 . THE VENUS CALLIPYGE. 

Warmer colors than those of summer 

Welcomed her from the Paphian wave, 

Which wantoned around the celestial corner, 
Half hiding the beauties it loved to lave. 

She, the light of her presence giving 

To Art, soon rendered the canvas warm ; 

And even the marble rock grew living 

And breathing with her developed form. 

Surely, in some entranced vision 

Of him who sculptured this statue, bright 
And blooming creatures from bowers elysian 

Glanced on his soul with their looks of light. 



There are times, when the senses, immuring 
The spirit, in passive slumber lie. 

And it catches, 'mid earth-clouds half obscuring, 
Glimpses in dreams of its native sky. 

Ye who, with vague, irrepressible yearning. 
At Beauty's shrines have in spirit knelt, 

Who a power and a passion, burning 

The lava-mould of your hearts, have felt — 



THE VENUS CALLIPYGE. 95 

Come — if such be in truth your nature — 
And gaze, with your parched Hps apart, 

On this perfection of form and feature ; 
Nature outdone by her sister, Ai-t. 

Gaze — as on Ida naught concealing, 

Floats the robe from her rounded arms ; 

So, with a triumph-blush, revealing 

To rivals and arbiter matchless charms. 



Never again to the young desire 

Will aught so graceful and glowing be given — 
Breathe, while ye may, the ambrosial fire 

And sensuous joy of the Grecian heaven ! 



THE ETEENAL FATHER. 

ON A PICTURE OF GUERCINO, IN THE BRIGNOLE PALACE, GENOA. 



I. 

A HOARY old man — old exceedingly, 
But otherwise distinguished not at all : 
An old man — wanting not in dignity, 
Yet nor sublime nor supernatural : 
An old man — brooding blindly o'er a ball, 
Held in the hollow of an angel's hand : 
A painting — Who or what the original ? 
Some seer or wizard gray without his wand ? 
The " Eternal Father " — Whom are we to understand? 

n. 

Lo ! God the Father, Holiest, the Most High ! — 
Where Christ the Son is pictured I have been ; 
Have seen, irradiate with divmity, 
Like lustrous shrines illumined from within, 



THE ETERNAL FATHER. 97 

His mortal lineaments and god-like mien ; 
Have seen, and felt my boy-lip tremulous, 
And my eyes fill with tears — O, it were sin 
To gaze unmoved ! But this is impious — 
Worse than absurd to paint Pervading Power thus ! 

III. 

Conceptions false to Truth and Truth's Ideal 
Should poets chasten with emphatic rod : 
Dishonoring, by embodied Age, the real 
Or the imagined attributes of God ! 
Up to the loftiness of His abode, 
Lonely tho' large as space, thought dare not climb ; 
None tread His courts who are not seraph-shod : 
Yet there, even there, 'twould seem, the touch of Time 
Palsies His might — Himself Eternity subhme ! 

IV. 

A shadowing forth of what is shadowless. 

Of a pure Spirit ; whence all visible Light, 

The stars, the day-spring, and the hues, which bless 

Earth with its all of beautiful and bright ; 

When that grand fiat, on chaotic night 

Pealed : "Let there be Light ! " and there was Light ! 

Lo! 
Doth it not burst here, sunlike, on your sight ? 
7 



98 THE ETERNAL FATHER. 

Is it not glowing in this picture ? No ! 
Prolong thy lightning, Heaven ! Keep bent thy beau- 
teous bow ! 

V. 

And shame this thing ! Yet why a miracle, 
Phenomena unknown to morn and even ? 
Into my brain crowd thoughts ineffable — 
O, ever present in the light and leven. 
When from above the azure veil is riven, 
And we unsphered in infinity, 
Shall we not find the Throne, the central Heaven, 
Beholding, face to face and eye to eye. 
The living God, and live ? The Soul can never die ! 

VI. 

God was in the beginning and before : 
And we — to deem it not irreverently — 
Flow from the fountain ; we for ever more 
Shall swell the waters of the mighty sea. 
Which rolls and circles to eternity ! 
We are the sons of God : all spirits are 
Of one pure essence, tho' obscured they be ! 
With wings that bore them hither from afar 
Shall the redeemed soar hence, as mounts the Morning 
Star! 



ABDERAHMET, 



I. 

Sad was his song by tlie blue Guadalqulver, 

Sad was the song of the royal exile, 
As he gazed on a palm-tree that lone by the river 

Grew, and the eventide ebbed the while. 
" Beautiful Palm, that I've long loved to rear, 
In thy grace oriental thou'rt alien here, 
Yet not uncompanioned, while seeming so lone ; 
And I envy thy friends — for, alas ! I have none ! 
The Summer that dowers. 
The dews and the showers. 
The soil where thy roots strike, the wind in thy towers." 

II. 

Long on that palm Abderahmet looked pensive : 

The crown of the West gilt his calm eve of liie ; 

But the heir of the East mourned a realm more exten- 
, sive, 
Mourned for his home, his youth darkened by strife. 



100 ABDERAHMET. 

" Westering the summer-day slopes down tlie sky, 
Westering the flushed wave slips murmurless by ; 
And the sea-breeze alone, like the thoughts of my breast^ 
Still seeks in the innermost East for its rest ; 

On soft shining eves, 

Like this, 'mid thy leaves. 
It sighs, like an amiable spirit that grieves." 

in. 

Last of his race ! un commiserate Heaven 

Had seen all hearts kin to him crimson the sword ; 

He had envied them, he to the dark deserts driven; 
And Abbas, his foe, in the Orient was lord. 

" Up throng the pleasant palms tall by the side 

Of Euphrates, long shadowing its broad-breasted tide; 

On the eve of my exile, those palm groves among, 

With warm tears I watered them, all the night long ; 
But forgotten, with morn. 
Was by them the forlorn 

Discrowned prince, weeping the day he was born." 

IV. 

Called to Spain's throne from the tent of the Bedouin, 
Burst forth his new pomp, as, after long dearth, 

Upsprings the white mushroom the rain-refreshed mea- 
dow in : 
Yet yearned he still for the land of his birth. 



ABDER AHMET. 101 

" Beautiful palm-tree, to me thou art dear, 
From thy high top in all the land seeing no peer. 
Towering, and tapering, and feathering wide. 
Fair tree of my planting, fair tree of my pride ! 

But thou, in thy state. 

So secure and elate. 
No sympathy hast for the sad exile's fate." 



THE GROTTO AZURE 

ISLAND OF CAPKI, BAY OF NAPLES. 



I. 

Many an arched roof is bent 

Over the wave, 
But none Uke thine, from the firmament 

To the shells at that thy threshold lave. 
What name shall shadow thy rich-blue sheen, 
Violet, sapphire, or ultra-marine, 

Beautiful Cave? 

n. 

Blue — all blue — may we not compare it 

With Heaven's hue. 
With the pearl-shell, with burning spirit, 

Or with aught that is azure too ? 
No ! for in ghostly realms alone 
Is the like of thy lustre shown. 
Cave of blue ! 



THE GROTTO AZURE. 103 

III. 

Less of earth than the spirit-world, 

Morning ne'er 
Waters of thine with its clews impearled, 

Nor sunrise crimsoned the concave here ; 
But Evening in thee hath, as grandly glooms 
The twilight which thy one star illumes, 

A rival sphere. 

IV. 

And that star — the great eye of Heaven 

Watching thee — 
Waxes and wanes with morn and even, 

Beams as the skies beyond may be ; 
Resting on thy horizon's rim 
Steadfast, but burning bright and dim 

Cbangefully. 

V. 

On thy huge dome and cathedral-aisles. 

Loftier far 
Than man's monuments, Capri piles 

Island rocks, which mountains are. 
Gleams thro' the flood thy spangled floor, 
As light streams in by thine open door 
On rock and spar. 



104 THE GROTTO AZURE. 

IV. 

The world without by that sole portal 

May enter in ; 
And, therefore, sacred to shapes immortal 
For classic ages thy halls have been. 
Sailing along from the lessening skylight, 
Let us from the deepening twilight 

Its secrets win. 

VII. 

Mermaids, mantled in mazarine, 

Fancy sees; 
The ocean-syrens, and her, their Queen, 

Of music-charmed memories. 
Still breathes the ancient Parthenope 
O'er waters of modern Napoli 
Her melodies. 

vni. 

Blue — blue — beautiful and intense — 

Every where : 
Spirits, or some one spirit immense. 

Breathing and burning in the air ; 
Making an ardent presence felt, 
Till the rocks seem as like to melt 
In the glare ! 



THE GROTTO AZURE. 105t 

IX. 

No ! they may emit no heat, 

Those prisoned beams. 
At noon-tide, in thy coolness sweety 

The glowing Italian summer dreams.. 
And the limpid and sparkling lymph 
Bath of beauty, in form of nymph, 

Well beseems.. 

X. 

World of wonders and strange delights,. 

Sub-montane sea. 
Bowers of branching stalactites, 

Islands of lapis lazuli. 
And waves so clear, and air so rich, 
That, gazing, we know not which is which — 
Adieu to thee ! 

XI. 

To bathe the burning brow is sweet 

In such baptism. 
Often to find out Truth's retreat. 

In sparkling grotto, in cool abysm : 
So shall deep quiet thy soul imbue, 
And melt into one harmonious hue 
The garish^prism I" 



CINTRA. 

^' Vanitas Yarutatuni. Omnia Vanitas. 



I. 

IN^o ON-DAY languors of summer-tide 

Voluptuous hang on Cintra's side, 

Luxuries of languor, deep 

And rich as a dream 'twixt wake and sleep ; 

Over all a delicious drowse. 

As — seen in an opium-eater's vision — 

Goddesses, with slumberous brows 

Beautiful, droop in bowers elysian ; 

All adown the mountain's side 

A hazy sunshine mantling wide, — 

And the golden quiet gentliest falls 

Round Montserrat's deserted halls. 

Lo ! the ruin — the site romantic ! 

Wanderer o'er the broad Atlantic, 

Sick at heart of the restless ocean 



CINTRA. 107 

That rolled thee hither, thou dee mest Hell 

To be a whirlpool of driving motion, 

Motion incessant, and forced, and frantic, 

As Vathek did; and thou as well 

Wouldst choose in so sweet a place to dwell ; 

A haven for the stormy-stressed. 

Where all that blooms, that breathes, seems blest 

With the fulness of a Heavenly rest. 

Yet a shadow haunts the ruin lone. 
And Voices are echoing mournfully ; 

This the burden of their moan : 
Vanity ! All is Vanity ! 

n, 

I wander about the grassy knoll, 
Whereon the crumbling mansions stand ; 
And, O, the scene that the site commands 
Might charm the least enthusiast soul ! 
Smoothed from the door is a sunny slope, 
Changeful as the kaleidoscope 
With wild flowers, which so gaily flaunt 
That the green is not predominant. 
For a young child's fall in a butterfly-chase 
Smoothed even to the mountain's base. 
And thence away to the eastward roll 
In light and shadow the sea-like hills ; 
And a kingdom's breadth the vision fills. 



108 CINTRA. 

Then, turning, I see above the browned 

Bald mountain's forehead, with turrets crowned, 

Where topples ever, our eyes to mock, 

The House of Our Lady of the Eock, 

All soft with a color of amethyst 

Thro' lazy up-coilings of long-drawn mist ; 

A mist whose moisture is dropped again 

In myriad threads of waterfall 

Down sunny valley and sunless glen ; 

And I hear the descent all musical 

"With silvery tinklings. From the frown 

Of a blue-green gulfed gorge, behind 

The mansion's site, bursts, vast and white. 

One torrent, in large flakes snowing adown. 

With a mellow yet hollow roar rolled on the wind. 

Treble and bass in harmony, 

A chorus of waters, and breathlessly 

Hang all things charmed on the lullaby. 

And it fills the halls and chambers lone. 
Ever so mournfully, mournfully ; 

This the burden of its moan : 
Vanity ! Hollow Vanity ! 



m. 



An under song the cicalas sing ; 
Only the lightest leaf's rustleing 



CINTRA. 109 

Scarce in their mazes the midges move, 

With the webs of gossamer interwove ; 

The lizard's slim shadow lies motionless 

On the mossy stone, in the path unthridded; 

Droops, with still pulse, a tranced Life 

Over rich fields with poppies rife. 

Their deep eyes, snowy and scarlet lidded. 

Heavy as with the consciousness 

Of a secret weight, pregnant with power. — 

Death that sleeps never, and Sleep that dies 

Into life, with the dawn of awakening eyes, 

Differing in breathing mortal breath, 

Dreamful or dreamless, O Sleep, O Death, 

How are ye so of kin, born twin 

From the self-same womb of a simple flower ? 

Yet breathe on our brows, sweet Peace profound, 

Be it Sleep, be it Death ; O, fold us round. 

Or above or under the poppied mound ! 

For Life, saith the Shade on the ruin lone. 
Is mutable, full of misery ; 

A fever-flush, a fainting moan, 
Vanity ! Hectic Vanity ! 

IV. 

A mountain-spur on either side 

Shoots out, with the gray-mossed cork-tree hoary, 



110 CINTRA. 

Like a long and lofty promontory 

Into and over an ocean-tide ; 

And I, like an idle boat, embayed, 

Embowered, like a bird, in aloe-shade. 

Like a babe, embosomed in Love's sweet zone. 

Am possessed by the beauty all alone. 

A glorious picture from mount to valley ! 

There the cork, shagging fantastically 

The steeps ; here, waveless in the calm, 

The feathery willow and plume-like palm, 

Where flow, developed to the skies. 

Fair and fertile declivities. 

Rounded into mound and dell, 

Green ripples light on the longer swell ; 

Gardens perennial as the Hesperides ; 

Where, ever spangling one bough, we find 

Fragrances of leaf and rind ; 

White-twinkling stars and planet-globes 

Golden, pending in orange-glooms. 

All untabled their ephemerides ; 

Trailers blowing trumpet-blooms. 

And heavily purpled the grape-festoons ; — 

All — save the beating heart of June 

Glowingly felt, while never a wind 

Reveals by the lifting of lustrous robes, — 

All would seem but a painting grand. 

The silent work of a master hand : 



CINTRA. Ill 

That windless and unclouded air, 
That seem so rapture-hushed and fair, 
And the perishing palace frowning there ! 
In faery land is a Shadow lone. 

And Voices that ever sing mournfully ; 
This the burden of their moan : 
Vanity ! Dissonant Vanity ! 

V. 

And now, shut in from the scene's expansion, 
In the central hall of the lonely mansion, 
Around me are but the crumbling walls. 
Weather-embrowned and mossy-dank, 
And a shadow of cold and darkness falls 
Upon me. Weeds and grass are rank 
Where undistinguished lie roof and floors, 
And, choking the gaps which once were doors^ 
The ivy. Yet more in their prime superb 
Than now did the intruding pile disturb 
Nature's juvenile, jubilant choir ; 
For jangles less the shattered lyre 
Than when its false note sounded high 
And loud in a lovely harmony ; 
And joy hath a tone, dark, tender, holy, 
That often, aye, ever is but twin-brother 
To the music-tears of melancholy; 
Blending still the one with the other, 



112 CINTRA. 

Even as with the beauty around 
These bare walls, toppling to the ground, 
Blending closelier seem to be, 
Evermore wasting silently, 
Like ice-bergs in a torrid sea. 
Plaunted by a Shadow lone, 

And Voices that echo mournfully ; 
This the burden of their moan : 
Vanity ! Perishing Vanity ! 

VI. 

Ah ! here the accomplished voluptuary 

Had found the content he sought, if the faery 

Xioveliness of the still seclusion 

Could of its own sweet self suffice 

For a soul like his ; but wealth's profusion 

He poured around him, never stopping. 

Any more than a drainless fountain. 

Silver-dropping, for the counting, — 

Esteeming his affluent heart and mind, 

His gorgeous fancy, his massed treasure 

Of knowledge, no more than the silks, and spice, 

And gold, and gems, of Orient Ind, 

Valueless save to subserve pleasure, — 

And, lo ! a palace in paradise ! 

Holy the garden-bloom of Eden ; 

And he turned it into a Moslem Heaven ! 



C INTRA. 113 

Youngest Eve its genius maiden; 

And to her was the flush of an Houri given ! 

The one philosophy throned in his thought 

Was that which the sage of C jrene * taught ; 

Until, his finer perceptions dull, 

Even in the fane of the Beautiful, 

The Hierophant turned from the shrine. 

And bowed to a light that was not divine. 

That pomp can pall and pleasure sate 

He proved, as was preached from his proud estate- 

By a prince in his grandeur not elate. 

And a Shadow lay on his own heart lone, 
As now on the ruin, audibly ; 

In the words of Solomon making moan : 
Vanity ! Vexing Vanity ! 

vn. 

And Vathek measured, O Israel, 
The height of thy crowned Wisdom hoary : 
Changes he rang on the same old story : 
Blight to the bloom, and gloom to the glory,. 
From the inward upon the outward fell. 
The restless fiend of satiety 
Into the hell of his very thought, 
Into the hell of unrest, had wrought 

* Aristippus. 

8 



3.14 CINTRA. 

His Elysium of idlesse and luxury, 

Ere he left it lone. In northern-more climes, 

Not wiser grown, hill-brows less faery 

Did he tiara with towers aery, 

Which all in turn, like these, grew dreary. 

Like these, which are mine for my moral rhymes ; 

TVhile the South is sunning bower and hall, 

Desolate and dismantled all, 

In their solitude paradisiacal. 

While a Shadow haunts the ruin lone. 
And Voices are echoing mournfully ; 

This is the burden of their moan : 
Vanity ! Restless Vanity ! 



VIII. 
My song and I, an hour ago, 
Had another scene and theme where, lo ! 
The mountain of Cintra craggy along ! 
Where the Cork Convent, stained mosses dark 
On its walls fantastic of whitened bark, 
Stands desolate rocky wilds among, 
Rude but not unromantic. There, 
In times foregone, like a fox in his lair, 
In the burial space, mortality's o\vn, 
Long did Honorius pray and groan. 



CINTRA. 115 

Hard by was a famous Sidi's tomb ; 

And thither as would wild santons come 

They shrank from the Christian's house of gloom. 

Say, soars the soul to a loftier stature, 

Degrade we soever our human nature ? 

Sad the impiety and the futility. 

Seeking so to be sanctified. 

Self-hypocritical all the humility, 

Never a deadlier sin was pride ; 

And he who the Heaven for himself would win, 

Not loving his neighbor, crowds sin on sin. 

Lo ! Pleasure and Pain ! but the first, refined 

By an ideal fancy and graceful mind. 

Less wofully errant, less utterly blmd ! 

Verily, by the Convent lone. 

The Shadow spake never so mournfully ; 

The same refrain its dismal moan : 
Vanity ! Wretched Vanity ! 



IX. 

Yet sweet may the clotted scourge be, sweet 
The long, long Lents, which the blood deplete ; 
For, couched on his frosted stone, by nights, 
Ecstatic, lapped in all rosy delights. 
May the anchorite's sleep be the Sybarite's. 



ttH C INTRA. 

And the storms like gales of Heaven may blow 

On his brows, strong music in their tlow ; 

And his crown of thorns drip blood and balm, 

The heavenly crown in his view, and the palm 

Triumphal waving, the shining raiment, 

Pomps, Powers, and Glories for the saintly claimant : 

Bearing the burden and the pain 

Of the Cross that his loss may be his gain. 

Is fancy, tho' mortified be the flesh, 

Never prurient, never impassioned ? 

Alas ! we are strangely and fearfully fashioned ! 

Nor his ribs so starved, nor his heart so pale. 

But he rises in dreams, as in ruddy youth hale, 

As an athlete lithe, as a bridegroom fresh — 

And who the Bride ? Pure, impressionless, 

Woos he the Beauty of Holiness ? 

No seraph she : the seraphic form 

Sins with an amorous ardor warm. 

Dark all Heaven with the deep, wild charm, 

Damning ; moist on his lips her sigh. 

Till he yields in voluptuous agony ; 

'Tis anguish and ecstasy, thrill on thrill : 

He may war with his nature, he cannot kill. 

Vexation, vanity all and folly : 

Not on the mountain the hermit holy. 

And the genius of Montserrat melancholy ; 



CINTRA. 117 

Who sought to make, where they chose to dwell, 
In the princely hall, the sepulchral cell, 
Earth a Heaven, or Earth a Hell ! 

And there as here, from the gray walls lone, 

A Shadow and Voices fell mournfully ; 
This the burden of their moan : 
Vanity ! Foolish Vanity ! 

X. 

I fled from the bigot's realm austere ; 

But still I love to linger here, 

With as much of sadness and less of fear. 

The live flame lappeth a levelled shrine : 

Still doth an exquisite genius twine. 

Not Psyche's, but Aphrodite's zone ; 

And ever there rings a faery-bell chime, 

Cadencing my heart and rhyme, 

Rinjyinf? in an undertone : 

Beautiful gulfs of phantasy, 

Musical, O, so mournfully ! 

And the close of all, in the Preacher's Word, 

Inspired, wiser than wisdom, spoken. 

Came to my thought, on the knoll, on the mountain : 

Or ever be loosed the Silver Chord, 

Or ever the Golden Bowl be broken, 

Wheel and Pitcher by cistern and fountain, — 



118 CINTRA. 

Then for thy body hath earth a grave, 
All things then their own shall have, 
And the Spirit return to the God that gave. 
It is vexed here, the monotone 

Of the world rings ever so mournfully ; 
Ever we hear the Preacher's moan : 
Vanity ! Vanity ! Vanity ! 



THE "REEFER." 



Spread thy plumes, mj pretty " Reefer ! " 

Speed to sea — Old Ocean's pet ! 
Tho' his hours of play be briefer 

Than his spells of " heavy wet." 
He shall rock thee like a cradle, 

Soothing us to slumbers warm, 
Not the measure of a ladle 

Of his spray to plash thy form.. 
This when eastern skies are rosy. 

When the west wears sunset's gold ;. 
"We the while reclining cosy, 

Charmed with every wavelet rolled.. 
Dost thou love to bend the knee for 

Sighs of air, the sea's soft curls ? 
Just like any handsome " Reefer," 

Flirted with by lovely girls. 



120 THE REEFER. 

But the name hath sterner meaning, 

Fraught with graver, braver life, 
Telhng of the gale's careening. 

And of elemental strife. 
When the lowering clouds look ugly, 

And the sea looms dark and high, 
We will " reef" thy canvas snugly, 

And like swiftest sea-birds fly. 
Close thy wings, my "reefing" schooner ! 

Well thy title suits the storm ! 
We will brave the tumult sooner 

Than the calm, nor dream of harm ! 



Yet once more thy " reefs " unfasten. 

And put all thy bravery on ! 
Heedless of the tempest, hasten. 

Ere the favoring gale be gone ! 
Wlierefore bear'st thou — it seems wondrous 

That thou should'st — in thy sea-shell. 
This dark gun, of metal pond'rous. 

Buoyant o'er the bounding swell ? 
Not in idle decoration — 

No, by yonder flag of stars ! 
It shall peal annihilation — 

It shall leave its thunder-scars ! 



THE REEFER. 121 

Till the Mexican shall shiver 

In his sultry capital, 
And on land, and sea, and river. 

Shall his arms and standard fall ! 
Speed, my gallant " Reefer," onward. 

As for some new sweetheart's charms ; 
For, if we be but the vanward, 

Glory woos with glowing arms ! 
Lightly thou canst sport with beauty, 

Like the foam canst skim the wave — 
Ay ! and thou shalt do thy duty. 

In the battle, with the brave ! 



THE PHANTOM GOOSE* 

BY THE WEDDING GUEST, TO WHOM WAS RELATED " THE KIME 
OF THE ANCIENT MARINER." 

" Kara ayis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno." 

Juvenal. 



PART I. 

It is a modern Mariner, 

And Cape Horn is on his lee, 
Wlien, on the wing, a ghostly thing 

Doth haunt him o'er the sea : — 
" Now what art thou, thou ghostly thing ? 

And wherefore haunt'st thou me ? 

" Thy shape is something like a bird's ; 

Yet sure in such a guise 
No sea-bird ever skimmed the wave, 

With look so wondrous wise. 

* This medley (I will not call it a poem) was wi'itten upon a banter. The 
title was furnished, and the author challenged to the task. Behold the 
result : a thing, sui generis, of unmitigated atrocity, which yet, for associa- 
tion's sake, I would wish to preserve. 



THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 123 

" Was thine, 'mong vapors vagabond, 

The jSgure which I marked, 
Mysterious in the far west yond. 

As lurid twilight darked ? 

" The clouds grew brown ; the shape was flown ; 

And I was left in doubt ; 
Now gleam'st thou gray, on my midnight way, 

And I cannot make thee out. 



" Gray art thou, as with weathering storms 

Thro' unimagined winters. 
Gray, glaring on the sinking deck 

And the ice-spar in splinters. 

" Why, even now, thou glar'st on me 
With such a look to daunt, — 

Why look'st thou so ? I fear thee though : 
So answer not, — Avaunt ! 



" Speak not, — but Go ! " The thing saith, « No ! 

I will not let thee loose ; 
For, mark me, hereby hangs a tale : 

I am a Phantom Goose ! " 



124 THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 

"A Phantom Goose ! The devil thou art! 

Am I a bird o' th j feather ? 
Why haunt'st thou me ? And why should we 

Cruise off Cape Horn together ? " 

" I am descendant from the Goose 

That laid the Golden Eojors : 
In life I was as great a goose 

As ever stood on legs, — 
Ah, me ! at sea, of little use 

Are now my precious pegs ! 

"North-eastward far, where I was born, 
Where an industrious race, at morn. 
Pry up the sun, with great crow-bars, 
Till it out-goldens all the stars, — 

There did I long for El Dorados ; 
Pregnant to grow with glittering ore ; 
And, bound for California's shore, 

I left my native meadows : 
For the power to lay had passed away 

With faery land and its shadows. 

" Thus far I came from Yankee marts, 
Shipped in a Grocery Shop : * 

* One of the numerous vessels, freighted with groceries, &c., at that time 
bound for California. 



THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 125 

I thought, Saint Francis ! on thy strand 

A thousand eggs to drop, — 
Yea, the whole sequel of my tale 

With golden eggs should pop ! 

" Goose that I was, to dream such dreams ! 

Never those sands of gold, 
And never even God's glad green Earth 

Again, shall I behold, 
Here doomed to wander, — but Avast ! 

And I'll the tale unfold. 



PART II. 

" The ship set sail ; the gentle gale 

Blew steadily from aft ; 
The blue wave splashed ; the white foam flashed 
And merrily on the Groceries dashed : 

Ours was a clipper craft. 

" The Sun, each morning, from the sea 

His anchor did up-heave 
To port ; and on the starboard hand 

He let it go at eve. 



126 THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 

" Higher each day, at last he had 

Upper nor loAver Hmb : 
The sextant rolled him like a wheel 

All round the horizon's rim ! 

" k'l hadowless on the unshadowed sea 

That glassy, brassy noon ; 
The sea was glass, the sky was brass ; 
And I thought, in the brooding calm, I was 

A snowy halcyon. 

" Eftsoons a cat with light paws crisped 

The crystal of the deep, 
With paws soft furred ; and low she purred, 

As she would soothe to sleep. 

" Anon the thing 'gan spit and mew : 

It was an angry breeze. 
No longer of a sapphire blue, 
The ripples into ridges grew, 

Blackening all the seas. 

" And, as before the roaring air 

And ocean, fled the ship, 
Over the taffrail, to the North, 

I saw the Pole Star dip. 



THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 127 

" It seemed like parting with a friend, 

A friend of many years ; 
For memory of my Gosling-liood 

That glittering star endears. 

" Often, when from the farm-yard Oak 

The dreaming cock would crow, 
I've hailed its gleam, as I awoke. 

Above the topmost bough. 
I shut my ears — still crows the cock ; 
My eyes — and glooms that ancient oak : 

I see and hear them now. 

" Once more, methinks, I see, at morn 

In the merry month of May, 
Wlien blooms the sweet-briar by the fence, 

The country boys at play. 

" And one, a sister of the group. 

Red-ripe her strawberry lips. 
Light as the dew upon the grass 

With twinkling ankles trips. 

" Her girl-shape rounding like the peach 
In Spring's ambrosial weather, — 

I loved her ; as did many a goose 
Who did not show his feather. 



128 THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 

" For she would take me in lier hand, 

A tender goshng then, 
And press my beak to hp and cheek — 

I taste those sweets again. 

" Again, in fancy, when it rains, 
We geese together huddle, 

"With chickens wondering at the ducks 
That paddle in the puddle. 

" Vain fancy ! Little then I dreamed 
Of this tremendous pond ; 

Alas ! I never thought to soar 

That white-washed fence beyond. 

" In kisses picked from pretty lips. 

Or else in picking corn. 
How sweet life passed ! I was not then 

A Phantom Goose forlorn ! 

" Here scowls and howls the windy squall, 
And there was only squabblin' : 

A Goblin of a Goose withal 
I never am a-gobblin' ! " 



THE THANTOM GOOSE. 129 



PART III. 



" The North-Star dipped : the inmost South 

Opened beyond the Line; 
And deepened — Heaven crowning Heaven^ 
Up to the utmost of the seven, 
The gold-spheres on their axles driven, 

Thro' all the night divine — 



" Deepened the darkness of its zone, 
Its warm blue darkness, overgrown 

With constellations grander 
Than ever summer-spanned the youth 
Of northern goose or gander. 



" The skies for us had symbols 23lain : 
For, lo ! configured in the Inane, 
The Argo, as she crossed the main ! 
We sailed to fleece for golden gain ; 

She chased the Golden Fleece. 
The clouds of Magelhan hung o'er 
Our path, and higher each night did soar^ 
Like far flocks piloting before, — 

Far flocks of white wild geese. 
9 



130 THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 

" The fresh breeze freshened to a gale, 
The strong gale piped the stronger, 

Till a storm it blew, and our craft she flew, 
And the stars shone out no longer. 

'" Like a coal-black horse, with reeking flanks. 
Snorting the white froth from her, 

.She left behind the billowy ranks. 

The seas and the skies of summer. 

" On, on she sped, like a coal-black steed, 
That a snow-white mane doth toss ; 

Till the cumulous stuff from the sky cleared off, 
And gleamed the Southern Cross ; 

" Gleamed out again the sacred sign 

Circling the Antarctic pole : 
A brow, mild-suffering and divine. 
Seemed bending down with mien benign. 

The tempest to control ; 
Seemed bending from the zenith down 

The Saviour's blessed Soul ! 

^' 'Twas calm once more — and yet not calm : 
With evil thoughts possessed. 



THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 131 

The sea slept a perturbed sleep, 
A sleep which was unrest. 

" In calm he dreamed of storm and wrack, 

And in his dreams groaned out. 
And ever wildly to the sky 

He tossed his arms about. 

" The ship, as heavily she rolled 

Upon the rolling swell, 
Her muffled bell herself she tolled : 

It was her parting knell ! 

" Her timbers creaked, her timbers leaked. 

In great troughs wallowing; 
And far away a sea-bird shrieked 

And clanged his mighty wing. 

"And what did I, 'mid these portents 

Of what was to befall ? 
I cackled louder than the Goose 

That saved the Capitol. 

" A capital goose that was : but I — 
A sailor, for my pains 



132 THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 

Did only knock me on the head ; 
And I lay stunned, as I were dead 
Grammercy ! it did stand in stead 
That I had not any brains ! " 



TART IV. 

" I came to life, — yet scarce was glad. 

The Ocean moaned on : 
But from on high Salvation had 

With its starred symbol gone. 

" A snowing mist, in spite of feathers, 

Did chill me thro' and thro' ; 
The crew, inured to winds and weathers, 

With cold and fear were blue. 

" Blue their cheeks as with beards new-shorn, 

Like fish-gills ; — and each took 
A horn, in homage to the Horn, 
And bluer yet did look. 

"The ocean moaned on: — I knew. 
By that strange, deepening moan, 

And by the wail of the rising gale. 
That the ship was a doomed one. 



THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 133 

" Around us was a dense, dank fog, 

And all the sails did drip ; 
When a gusty flaw — a williwaw — 
With a startling whoop and a sudden swoop, 

Dashed headlong on the ship : 
The Stormy Spirit of the Cape 

His stormiest fiend let slip. 

" I cackled louder than at first ; 

They heeded not my cackling : 
The seamen all did stoutly haul, 

For dear life, on the tackling. 

" ' Land, ho ! ' Gray mountains, thro' the drift 
Of gray fog-smoke, did show and shift ; 
Spectral, gigantic, jagged-cliffed, 

With snows of ages hoary : 
Those first acquaint had given a saint 

To each black promontory : 

" But Saint Diego and Saint John 

Looked out with frown uncivil ; 
And the devil a saint took pity on 

Our straight course to the Devil! 

" To the Devil, in sooth ! — A gray old man 
Stood near me in full view : 



134 THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 

I ne'er had looked on him before : 
He was not of the crew. 

" Right in our midst, a gray old man, 

"With glassy glittering eye, 
Wherein there dwelt the unfathomed calm 

Of cold malignity. 

" Skinny his paws, with long bird-claws ; 

His brow all streaked with sleet. — 
The captain looked him in the face. 

And dropped stone-dead at his feet ! 

" * What man art thou ? ' the mate did ask, 

And clutched him by the back : 
The old man turned him — slowly — slowly — 
And the mate laughed out with a laugh right jolly ; 

A merry maniac ! 

" 'Ha ! Ha ! Thou art a rare old joker, 

Friend Davy Jones, I ween — 
Sing, Hey, diddle, diddle — But Avhere is thy fiddle, 
To strike up a tune when we stow thy Locker, 

And dance on Fiddler's Green ? ' " 



THE FHANTOM GOOSE. 135 



PART V. 



" War was in Heaven : peal on peal 

The blasts did come, with the heavy boom 

Of great guns double-shotted. 
The helm did slip, and the helmsman a-trip 
Fell, head under heel, over the wheel, 

And burst his great carotid : 
But he gripped the spoke with a death-clenched grip ; 
While the swinging rudder did unship ; 
And the topsails streamed in many a strip. 
That cracked in the wind like a coachman's whip, 

All tangled up and knotted ; 
And the masts and yards made the seamen skip, 

As, with a crash like thunder, 
They splintered down and the decks did rip, 

And few could stand from under. 

" None to direct, unsteered, unchecked, 

We drove thro' whiteness blind. 
Hither and thither, none knew whither, 

At the wild will of the wind. 

" The spray flew, freezing, fore and aft, 
Till the remaining spars 



iM THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 

And shrouds and sheets were sheathed in frost, 
And stood like crystal bars. 

" Sudden a keener coldness shot 

Through each heart like an arrow. 

Curdling up in the veins the blood, 
And in the bones the marrow. 

" And, sudden, stunned with ponderous roar, 
Shattered on what near rocks 

Are those huge, solid seas ? And whence 
Those close, sharp thunder-shocks ? 

" Are Genii in the low sky bowling ? 

The sound is very like : 
Huge balls thro' long, dark alleys rolling, 

And always a ' ten-strike.' 

'" An ice-berg ! Horror ! Hard a-lee ! 

Was it the foul fiend laughed ? 
Ha ! Ha ! Ay, safely to the shore, 
With all Niagara's roar before. 
Guide ye the oarless raft ! 

" A moment a dark indigo pile 
Toppled high o'er the mast ; 



THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 137 

Then came the shock — the crash — the smash — 
And the end was come at last! 

" With broken wing, a bruised thing, 
I found me afloat on a shattered boat, 

And Death was all around. 
I was the last to perish there : 

I saw the strong men drowned. 

" Gemini ! 'twas a thrilling thing 

To see those strong men die; 
To hear the shriek, the groan, the gasp, 

Despair's last frantic cry ! 

" But some, the bravest, like the wolf 

Or monkey mutely died ; 
All sounds, save the gurgling agony, 

Heart-stifling, in their pride ! 

" But where that gray old fiend ? I saw 

Terrific wings swoop nigh, 
An Albatross, Vv'ith swollen craw, 

With glazed and hungry eye. 

" And I knew that the fiend and the bird were one ; — 
And the icy wave warmed to red, 



138 THE PHANTOM GOOSE. 

Where, lending a horror new to death, 
He pounced on the drowning head. 

" I knew that the fiend and the bird were one. 
By the cold eye's horrible glare ; — 

And all were gone, and on me alone 
He fixed it in a stare. 

" Stranger ! in fury and in contempt, 

He tore me limb from limb ! 
My tale is done. Hast thou ever dreamt 
Of the fiend ? 0, be thy death exempt 

From the shadow and clutch of him ! " 



STOEM AND SUNSET. 



I. 

Signal the winds away 

To the funeral of the Day, 
With thy blaze, terrible thunder ! and thy blast, thou 
stormy tromp ! 

From east, south, west, and north, 

Call the gray Genii forth, 
With a moan of immortal agony, in melancholy pomp. 

II. 

Ay, call the Genii old 
Of the strong winds, to uphold 
His pall. Bid the clouds weave it in the wild Hea- 
ven's crashing loom. 
And o'er the mighty dead 
Be its dusk crimson spread, 
With the huge shadow on the deep of its mingled glare 
and gloom. 



14:0 STORM AND SUNSET. 



III. 

The Kings of Sea and Air, 



Of Cloud and Fire, are there ; 
The ghostly kings around their chief in fierce woe con- 
gregate, 
Who, in the purple born. 
Dying is left unshorn 
Of golden crown and sceptre and imperial robes of 
state. 

IV. 

Male spirits shall alone 
Tend the departed one — 
Away, ye sisterhood of Dews, your eyes are blind with 
tears ! 
Sadly, young Queen-Moon, bow 
The crescent on thy brow, — 
Nor, 'mid the angry tempest, may'st thou lift it for thy 
fears. 

V. 

Only the Albatross 
Of mortal things may cross 
(If mortal with his fiendish eye) the path of that 
spectral host ; 



STORM AND SUNSET. 141 

For hark his screaming hoarse 
O'er the sunken wreck ! — the corse 
Of the mariner that shall gorge his craw lone on the 
billow tossed. 



VI. 

A lurid pageant, so 
The grim pall-bearers go 
Adown the long halls of the West, with the mourners 
and the shroud, 
Till, reached the world's last verge, 
Lo ! high above the surge 
The funeral pile gigantic ! And their wail is wild and 
loud. 



VII. 

Yet wilder and more loud 
The winds shrill, in the cloud 
Groans the great thunder, as uprush the kindled 
tongues of fire ; 
For one tense moment high 
Liflaming sea and sky ; 
And then the night falls, dark and dread, upon the 
smouldering pyre. 



142 STORM AND SUNSET. 

VIII. 

So terrible is Death. 
But doubt not, heart of Faith, 
The immortal stars so beautiful are strong the clouds 
above, 
Strong with the plastic stress, 
Omni^Dotent to bless, 
Of the arch-seraph, mightier far than Death, whose 
name is Love ! 



HAWAII 



An ocean-planet, rounded by a glory, 
The billowy glory of the great Pacific, 
Withdrawn in spheres remote of rolling blue. 

An island, central with inferior groupings, 
Like Jupiter, in the cerulean distance, 
Magnificent among his circling moons. 

Planet-like poised half submerged in ocean : 
One hemisphere above the water-level 
Apparent, belted by three climate-zones. 

The heavy mango droops, the slim palm towers, 
By intertropical shores ; gleam silver summits 
(Thro' wind-clouds) Arctic with eternal frost. 



144 HAWAII. 

Crowned with the vast white dome of Mauna Loa/ 
Escarpments rich with the pandanus, ravines, 
Cascades and rainbows, form thy globular shelf. 

A hollow globe : beneath the snow, the verdure, 
The ambient ocean, live, primordial fires. 
Which have created, dwell — and maj destroy. 

Nor long since, from the o'erboiling Kilanea, 
Adown a mighty steep, a Niagara 
Of gory-red lava rolled into the sea. 

And Niagara's roar were untremendous, 
And thunderous wars, Titanic or Satanic, 
To that antagonism of elements. 

Long leagues to sea, mariners on the night-watch 
Questioned the deep clouds of that luminous horror, 
With faces livid in its lurid glare. 

Lo ! storm and havoc, cataract and convulsion. 
Are here ; the hot surge rock ; and the rock horrent 
With hell-born Pela's hair, crisped and cold. 

Hush — hence the theme! 'Tis torrid noon, with 
freshness 



< HAWAII. 145 

On lake and waterfall, soft vowels and laughter 
From brown amphibious girls in Eden's guise. 

And, as I gaze and write, glorious Hawaii ! 
I see no terror in thy soaring beauty, 
Thy sky of lazuli and sapphire sea. 



10 



THE COLUMBIA RIVER 



I. 

Oregon midniglit with a round moon. Mellow 
On savage steeps sublime a stillness argent 
Along the lone Columbia ; every billow 
Where the moon's slumber breathes a smoothed pillow ; 
As calm the caves in rock-columnar shadows, 
Blacker for fir and hemlock. Islands, meadows, 
Wave in the low winds, all the alluvial margent 
Fragrant with fringe of cotton-wood and willow. 
A lovelier witchery than hers of Endor 
Than Samuel's forms a phantom more tremendous : 
For, vague in shroud-like mantle, misty white. 
Looms hoar Saint Helen's with a ghostly splendor : 
The apparition of some mount stupendous 
Belonging to a world pre-Adamite ! 

n. 

Look ; use that one sense only ; naught to listen 
Hast thou in the sweet calm. Superbly flowing 



THE COLUMBIA RIVER. 147 

By piny banks basaltiform, romantic, 
Lo ! the smoke-purple river amethystine ; 
While the sun rises a discoloring mist in 
With lustre like a full-blown rose gigantic. 
High up in whiter light three snow-peaks glisten. 
A reflex, like a levelled obelisk, 
Lies pointing to the sun's purpureal disk ; 
Like rubies lucid thro' the thin wave glowing 
Along : 'tis magical : her treasure shine, 
At flow of morning's oriental fountains. 
Revealed by some Enchantress of the Mine 
To Genii of the Stream and of the Mountains ! 

III. 

Rolled up the huge gorge long a billowy roar 
Has shaken the mountain firs with storms of sound ; 
But now the Cascades, as the bluff ye round, 
Burst forth like a magnificent meteor, 
Grand the white turbulence, the foamy smother, 
And beautiful the blue-green stream behind, 
Made less crystalline by nor wave nor wind, 
As if — the one contiguous to the other — 
The calm slept dead and the storm surged on ocean. 
Careers, like scud before a hurricane. 
The vast foam — the great mountains whirl — your brain 
Reels with the rushing parallactic motion. 



148 THE COLUMBIA RIVER. 

Look up, where flows the river gentliest, 

There is a charm of peace — lo ! all again is rest ! 

IV. 

Proud Bird, with no compeer and no companion, 
From where snow-summits highest are and hoarest 
To where the slow swell lifts the ocean-kelp, 
The river rolled in cataract thro' the caiion 
Or seaward floating wrecks of vast fir forest, 
High o'er the raven's croak, the sea-gull's yelp, 
Bald Eagle of the Oregon, thou soarest ! 
And thou that here thy tides and billows pourest, 
Calm and as strong as Heaven, sublime Pacific, 
Here where the freighted inland waters launch — 
Where'er the bird screams or the salt air pipes, 
Ocean and Eagle, ye are Freedom's types ; 
When all her broad domain is beatific, 
And her uncrimsoned conquering bears the olive branch ! 



FAREWELL. 



Farewell ! It is breathed forth like fragrance that 

flows 
From Spring's latest violet, Summer's last rose, 
Like the bird's song whose dying notes plaintively swell 
In the drear woods of Autumn — forever Farew^ell ! 
Forever ? O, no ! this world is not so wide 
But that, in its changes of time and of tide. 
We may meet; and Youth's heart is a Sibyl who weaves 
Sweet hopes for the future from memory's leaves. 

We mourn when the sun sets, when summer moons wane, 
But the new moon and morrow come shining again ; 
If we for their timely returning should fear, 
O, the last tints of twilight would doubly be dear : 
For long in the western sky lingers the light 
Where Memory weeps in the shadow of night ; 
And 'tis thus that a luminous joy lives, when set, 
In the tears of remembrance all roseate yet. 



150 FAREWELL. 

Believe me, the past hath pure joys of its own 
For us all, which we would not exchange for a throne ! 
The star hath its shadow — yet who from its ray 
Would turn him for that reason blindly away ? 
My sweetest of friends ! in thus parting with thee 
A thousand times sadder this Farewell would be. 
Had I buried, instead of embalming in flowers. 
The rose-ashen relics of happier hours. 

Love's arrow was ne'er winged more true to its mark 
Than the ship — our cradle, our castle and Ark ! 
With her spars bent like bows, with her white sails 

asleep, 
All loftily lording it over the deep ! 
Too swiftly, since Hope shall lag, slower than she. 
Since homeward means hourly farther from thee ; 
Since joy long shall feel, darkly shaded, the spell 
Of thine eloquent eyes when they thrilled with Fare- 
well ! 



ELEGIAC STANZAS. 



I. 

I STAND beside tlie grave of one 

Who died ere Beauty's prime, 
Ere scarce had opened to the sun 

The flowers of morning time ; 
And griefs, yet uncontrolled, like deep, 
Strong torrents o'er my spirit sweep : 
For she was so endeared to me 

As first love only can endear ; 
And, O, the world of memory 

"With her is compassed here ! 

II. 

She was so beautiful : her brow 

Like a white water-lily, 
O'er which her rippled ringlet-flow 

Fell goldenly and stilly ; 



152 ELEGIAC STANZAS. 

Soft was her cheek and sweet its blush, 
Her thought a rosy hghtning-flush ; 
So, day by day, grace developing 

To all the perfect woman shows, 
As, rounding in the glow of spring, 

The fragrant apple grows. 

III. 

And fitly her fair form enshrined 

The spirit-gem within ; 
The sparkle of a gifted mind, 

A soul unsoiled by sin. 
There Genius, like a lambent flame, 
Shone pure; — and when the shadow came. 
The mortal shadow of her doom. 

Her bright eye seemed to grow more bright. 
As if, with earth, there passed a gloom 

From that celestial light. 

IV. 

How madly did I watch the bloom 

On her warm cheek decay. 
Disease's wasting fires consume 

Its young and lovely prey ! 
Consumption ! with thy blighting breath 
Why mark the loveliest things for death, 



ELEGIAC STANZAS. XS3 

Gathering from all the wide parterre 

The freshest flower, the tenderest leaf? 

Sweet things ! ah ! well thy emblem her, 
As beautiful and brief! 

V. 

Yet should this hallowed hour and place 

Serener feelings bear ; 
And both seem faery-charmed to grace 

The rest of one so fair. 
A mournful music haunts her tomb, 
Deep-breathing o'er the sombre bloom ; 
For always the dark pine above 

Moans, tho' the windless air seem still. 
The lone wood-pigeon calls his love, 

Or wails the whip-poor-will. 

VL 

The even-dews and stars of even 

Gleam from the twilight forth : 
It is that solemn time when Heaven 

Seems nearest to our Earth. 
The hour is with an influence fraught, 
"Which moves the mind to pensive thought: 
Soft, soul-eyed, sorrowful phantasies, 

Oi memory and of twilight bred, 



154 ELEGIAC STANZAS. 

From many a shadowed scene arise, 
In far time islanded. 

VII. 

Be hushed, my Heart ! The exotic rose, 

The child of summer skies, 
In colder climes less brilliant blows, 

Droops dimlier, droops and dies. 
And she, ah ! she looked Eden born, 
And soon she died, nor will we mourn — 
O, rather bless the Almighty arm 

That bore the blossom from our eyes, 
Fragrant with every perfect charm 
Restored to Paradise ! 



SONG 



To the trysting tree, O come with me, 
Mary, the May-moon shines for thee, 
The sweet May -moon, and for only thee ! 

For thee is the musical mock-bird's call, 
For thee are the lime-leaves tremulous all, 
In the light wind, trembling in chorus all. 

Jasmines shall blow about thy feet, 
The dew on their perfumed petals sweet, 
Like joy in thy dark eyes tearful, sweet. 

Like the tree we'll whisper a thrilled delight ; 
Our hearts, like flowers that blow by night, 
Shall open wide, in the charming night. 

There, Mary mine, while the world's asleep, 
Will we with the stars and the flowers keep - 
Will we not, dearest ? sweet vigil keep. 



THE WALK OF LOVE. 



Lo ! the moon's crescent thro' yon leafy grove ! 
Doth the young Dian with Endymion rove ? 
There, ever when the air of early night 
Hath undulations blending dark and bright, 
When all its winds beneath the moon are still, 
At even-song, at plaint of whip-poor-will. 
When, to poetic youth, the harmonious time 
Thrills like a beautiful remembered rhyme, 
That youth impassioned with a light arm wreathes 
A tremulous form, and all his ardor breathes! 
And she is silent — but can language speak 
Like her heart flushing over brow and cheek, 
Blinding her eyes with sweet, half childish tears, 
So new to virgin youth her hopes and fears ? 
And, as with timid and most touching grace 
She lifts those dim eyes to his earnest i'ace. 
Confused yet grateful, shy with girlish feeling, 
While all her woman's boundless trust revealing, 



THE AYALK OF LOVE. 157 

Fold her, happy lover, heart to heart ! 

And swear to cherish until death do part. 

To cherish and to reverence — God above 

So crowns thy manhood ; and His love shall prove 

In this, thy two-fold life, love-born, creating love ! 



SONG OF THE EVIL SPIRIT. 



I. 

In the interlunar night, 
When the stars are shut from sight ; 
When from heaven the cloudy gloom, 
Like fore-shadowings of a doom 
Darker even, on earth shall fall, 
Imaging its funeral pall. 
Blackness of great darkness all, — • 
Save the shoot of livid lightning, 
Sulphur-flame in blue sheets bright'ning. 
Seeming that infernal flare 
With the Evil Eye to glare, — 
;Save, along the marsh's edge, 
In among the whispering sedge, 
Will-o'-the wisps, — in the thickets dark, 
Rotten wood and fire-fly spark ; 
When the meteor-rattlesnake 
vCoils him in the secret brake ; 



SONG OF THE EVIL SPIRIT. 159 

"When those winged mice the bats, 

And the horrible water-rats, 

Haunt the old house on the flats ; 

When the dreary winds are shrieking, 

And the scathed oak's boughs are creaking;— 

Then, in that unholj time. 

Tolled for fiends by chapel-chirae, 

Then shall be my victim's soul 

Manacled in my control! 



n. 

That wherewith the world is haunted, 

By mysterious law implanted 

In man's heart — an inborn dread 

Of the disembodied shade. 

Giving, strangely to appal, 

Power to the preternatural. 

So that he, who scarce would yield 

To a host in battle's field, 

At the rustled leaf will start, 

With a tremor at his heart ; — 

This deep terror will I waken, 

Till his very soul is shaken ; 

And a nameless fear shall seize him. 

And a shapeless horror freeze him ! 



160 SONG OF THE EVIL SPIRIT. 

III. 

Therefore dotli he never pass 
That old house by the morass ; 
Her the swamp, the house shall shun, 
"Where, in days of yore, were done 
Deeds of dark-ensanguined guilt ; 
Where the life-blood has been spilt, 
Staining yet the crumbled walls ; 
Where stern retribution calls ; 
Where the death-beat seems to throb 
In the air, the gusts to sob, 
Ever in the midnight — Thither 
Wends he not in any weather ! 
And, beneath the scathed oak, neither 
To the grave-yard by the hill. 
With the dead men cold and still ; 
Where the tomb-stones wannish-white 
GUmmer with a ghastly light ; 
Fearful lest the ghosts in wrath 
Gibbering flit athwart his path ! 
Yet — poor fool ! — he cannot fly 
From one spirit, ever nigh ; 
No good Genius of the Lamp, 
In the darkness and the damp. 
Ever, with a viewless stride, 
Stalk I by his shrinking side ; 



SONG OF THE EVIL SPIRIT. 161 

And, at mj malignant will, 
He shall with my presence thrill ; 
He shall feel me, as a part 
Of the hell which is his heart ; 
Nerveless all his frame shall shake, 
As his lineaments I take, 
And, in every glass, he views 
Darkest hell's demoniac hues ! 

IV. 

Vainly shall he strive to steep 
Thought within the depths of sleep. 
Quakes of central fire may pass 
Ruffling o'er the fountain's glass, 
When the earth-embowelled shock 
Moveth not the mountain-rock ; 
Thus — tho' sense be locked above — 
O'er his sleepless soul I move. 
And convulse its secret streams 
With the under-world of dreams ! 

V. 

Waking or asleep my slave, 
So determined — none may save ! 
Patiently I bide my time : 
Gathers form the damning crime; 
11 



162 SONG OF THE EVIL SPIRIT. 

Crime so foul, that men shall wonder 
At the silence of the thunder ! 
Him predestined to the brink 
Driving, tho' his soul shall shrink — 
Lo ! Remorse that shall come after ! 
Hark ! Hell echoes to my laughter, 
Me subserved and scornful Evil, 
O'er a lost soul that shall revel ! 
Yet the wretch would vainly fly : 
Free Will is a mockery ! 



.-* 



A SKETCH. 



Sweet Isabel ! both fair and good, 
But very wayward in her mood ; 
An April mist of sadness 
Now, with a light rain, flittingly 
Clouds o'er the clear blue of her eye ; 
And now returning gladness. 
Like sunshine streamed where rivulets rimple, 
Laughs out at once in every dimple. 

Her innocence it Is inherent 
As purity in every gem ; 
Yet is she not serene like them, 
Her mind not crystalline transparent. 
When in the sweet — half sad — half arch — 
Expression of her brow you search. 
In rose-fenced, faery land of youth, 
Ne'er has she wept a blighting truth, 
She knows beyond no real ruth. 
Ah ! what the fountain can obscure 
As well her young impulses pure ? 



104 A SKETCH. 

Say, why indulges she this seeming 

Capriciousness of will and way? 

This absent air of dreaming, 

When fancies wild will truant play? 

Leaning upon her hand her face 

In attitude of pensive grace, 

What time, perchance, the star of even 

Enchastens the sun-passioned heaven, 

Her eyes fixed upon vacancy. 

As tho' the Twilight were a presence ! 

Say whence the mystery 

Involving even her gaiety, 

When flashes sprightliest evanescence ? 

Ah ! rather should we ask, M'hat art 

Hath e'er divined youth's sibyl-hea t ? 

Doth sweet fore-warning whisper h -rs ? 

Passion fore-breathed in joy and sorrow, 

A dainty sorrow, which so doth borrow, 

From joy, at neither she demurs ; 

Companioned thus the shadowy brother 

Making joy fitful ; than the other 

Neither diviner? Swells her bosom. 

As on the tree the apple-blossom, 

With Love a-ripening ? Who shall tell ? 

She cannot — Innocent Isabel ! 



THE VISION OF ISAIAH. 



I SAAV the Almighty on His throne, 
Up-lifted in the high Heaven ample ; 

Pure with empyreal light it shone ; 

And His train filled the soaring temple. 

Above it stood the Seraphim, 

On spread wings twain that grandly hover ; 
With twain they veil their faces dim ; 

And still with twain their feet they cover. 

And one unto another cried 

Unceasing : " Holy, holy, holy. 
The Lord of hosts, and none beside. 

And earth reflects His glory solely." 

T oved at his voice the threshold-posts ; 

A great smoke darkened all the presence : 
" Alas ! Tve seen the Lord of hosts. 

With unclean lips, of unclean essence ! " 



166 THE VISION OF ISAIAH. 

Then flew a seraph, with a coal 

Live in his hand from off the altar: 

" Lo ! this hath touched thy lips, thy soul 
From sin is purged, no more to faUer." 

Also an awful voice spake thus — 
I heard Jehovah in my vision : 

" Whom shall I send ? and who for us 

Shall charge his soul with this high mission ? 

" Send me, Lord, here, even here I am : 
My lips with inspiration burning." 

*' Go, tell this race of Abraham, 

Hear ye in vain — see, undiscerning. 

" Go, and make fat this people's heart. 
Heavy their ears, their eyelids sealing, 

Lest eyes, and ears, and heart convert. 
And they shall come to me for healing." 

" How long," I ask, " Lord ? " He said : 

"Till all be utterly forsaken, 
Desolate, uninhabited, 

And men shall far away be taken. 



THE VISION OF ISAIAH. 161 

" Yet shall a few return again, 

The land revive from desolation ; 
Yet shall the holy seed retain 

The life, the substance of the nation. 

*' Their leaves tho' oak and teil-tree cast, 
Their boles the life-warm juices nourish ; 

Which, like the holy seed, at last, 

In season due, shall greenlier flourish." 



THE VISION OF EZEKIEL. 



By the strong hand of the Lord rapt, was the ancient 

seer set down 
In the midst of a great valley, which with human bones 

was strown. 

Lying in the open valley, very many, very dry : 

" Son of man, can these bones live ? " " O Lord, thou 

f knowest, and not I." 

" Prophesy unto these bones " — spake then the Spirit 

of the Lord — 
Saying : O ye dry bones, hearken (saith Jehovah) to 

my word. 

" I will lay upon you sinews, and all tissues meet, and 

give 
Heart and brain, and breath of life ; and ye shall know 

the Lord, and live." 



THE VISION OF EZEKIEL. 169 

So the prophet as commanded ; so the Ahnighty did 

appoint 
Rattling bones to come together, every bone into its 

joint. 

Lo ! Ezekiel saw ! Incarnate were they all from foot 

to head ; 
But they moved not ; all was breathless yet — a valley 

of the dead ! 

Once again the Lord spake: "Prophesy, thy right 

arm reaching forth 
To the east, and to the south, and to the west, and to 

the north. 

" Prophesy unto the wind, and say : Breathe over all 

the plain ; 
From the four winds come, O Breath, and breathe thy 

life into these slain." 

Came the breath; they lived; they rose up to their 

feet, as tho' from sleep : 
An exceeding mighty army, with a roar as of the deep ! 



TO HELEN. 



flow purely the Pleiades sparkle in heaven, 

And shed their sweet influence over the earth; 
And ever the fairest I choose of the seven 

For that, sweetest Helen, which shone on our birth. 
0, ours was a beautiful, blossoming time. 

At blush of young roses, the earliest here ; 
On us fell the purple of Spring in its prime ; 

And to Maia, our mother, our childhood was dear. 

A-Maying 'mid roses, our cradles which muffled, 

We go when the morn veils the Pleiad afar ; 
And that roses of feeling for thee be unruffled, 

Oh ! blest be the influence of the sweet star ! 
And care will not come, dear, thy heart's bloom to blight, 

So young and so lovely, so tender and true ; 
Still, still is thy vernal sky pure in the light — 

Ah, me ! were my own as immaculate too 



TO HELEN. 171 

Gaze not on yon large planet, rounded and bright — 

How many will say, their particular sphere! 
Tho' scarcely as large as its lea>t satellite, 

Should the twinkle of Maia be tenfold more dear! 
Like a cloudlet of light shines that sweet little cluster 

Wherein is our natal orb radiantly shrined : 
We will dream, as together we gaze on its lustre, 

Of spring-time perennial our spirits shall find I 



THE ROSES. 



I. 

Strkw tliy sister^s corse, weeping maiden! 

With pale roses of the summer gone, 
Till the white sliroud which she is arrayed in 
Is beside their purer whiteness wan : 
Strew, from head to feet, 
With those petals sweet, 
All that Love hath left to brood upon. 

II. 

Paying unto her the last sad duty 

Which the human family can ask, 
Xet there be this thought of delicate beauty, 
Beautifully tender, in the task : 
In autumnal hours 
Die the summer flowers : 
So died she : let them Death's darker features mask. 



THE ROSES. 175 

III. 

Quench thy burning tears, O blinded weeper ! 
Gaze with cahner mournfuhiess on death; 
On the mute hps of the marble sleeper, 
Moved not and unmoistened by a breath ; 
On those azure lids, 
Which no rose-vein thrids, 
And whose fringe no soft light streams beneath. 

IV. 

But how lovely lies she ! As if weary 

Of life's long day she hath fallen asleep. 
Throngs thy throbbing brain with fancies eerie ? 
Ah ! there breathes a sanctity so deep, 
It would scarce affright, 
Were some form of light 
To appear, its spirit watch to keep 1 

V. 

In the clay-cold presence calm-commanding 

Of imperial Death thou art not awed ; 
For the peace which passeth understanding 
Charms its horrors — even the peace of God I 
Yet, so fair and young, 
The weak heart is wrung 
Thinking of her form beneath the sod. 



174 THE ROSES. 

VI. 

With the breathing things beloved of Flora, 

Lay her where the mould is lightliest pressed ; 
And, at morning twilight, shall Aurora 

Take their bloom, exhaling, to her breast ; 
For the fair and good 
Form a sisterhood, 
Linked in lovely wise, from great to least. 

VII. 
So the ancients fabled ; Faith diviner 
Speaks as beautiful a truth to thee : 
Not a perfume breatlK^d, O vain rei)iner ! 
Tho' the floweret fade, can cease to be. 
Then thy charnel-wreath 
Twine for her, whose breath 
Gathers shape in Immortality ! 



THE FLAMES. 



O, LAY not her loveliness under the sod, 

When life's silver chord shall have parted — 

The frame of the lute when the music's with God — 
The gentle girl now broken-hearted ! 

"Would ye that the worms of the valley should prey 
On the lips once like roses above her ? 

Or rather the Fire King waft her away, 
Forever in free air to hover? 

Then of wood of the sandal and aloe trees rear, 

All fragrant, the funeral pyre : 
For sure there is nothing of darksome or drear 

In the shadowless Spirit of Fire. 

O, beautiful he is, and hath not his peers 

In the elements — he is their master ! 
To him give her blighted bloom, dewed with our tears, 

Ajid he, tlio' he burn, shall not blast her. 



176 THE FLAMES. 

She shall scorch, like the lily she looks, in his breath ; 

But paly, and pure, and perfuming, 
His arms shall her beauty unblemished envvreath, 

And even refine whilst consuming. 

Ye will find that, when clouds which concealed her 
unfold. 

She hath fled in her rich robes of burning ! 
And tho' ye may glean from the pile, and when cold 

Give the ashes a splendid inurning ; 

Yet oft as the Evening Star chastens the blush 

Of sunset that brightens beneath her, 
Ye will deem it her heart, which its soft fires flush, 

That palpitates in the pure ether ! 



IN STERNUM 



" I take my chance -witli those that are to perish I "" 

HlNSOX 



I. 

" Write an epitaph for me ! " * 
So, in days of boyish glee, 
Spake young Friendship's phantasie. 
Could it even then foresee 
Clouds of early destiny ? 

Did there darken 
Shadowy storm and phantom gloom 
Of an ill-starred vessel's doom, 
And an eagle-spirit's plume 
Stiffened in a wave-walled tomb ? 



*^ The friend, who, at an early period of our intimacy, preferred the request 
\rith which tliis poem commences, and in honor of whose memory it is written . 
was Passed Midshipman John Ringgold Hynson of the United States Navy 
He perished, under circumstances of romantic gallantry, with the ill-fated 
brig of war Somers, near Vera Cruz. Those who knew him. and who lament 
him as men have rarely heen lamented, will appreciate me; and to them, 
abating nothing herefrom for the usual exaggerations of affection and of 
poetry, is this submitted for indorsement. 

12 



VTS IN iETERNUM. 

Did it hearken 
To a voice from Time's deep womb, 
Like, at sea, tlie thunder's boom 
From the land's horizon-loom ? 

II. 
^' Write an epitaph for me ! " 
"Where shall it engraven be ? 
On the rocks where weeps the sea 
In salt surges ceaselessly? 
We, too, wept salt tears for thee, 

In our wo ! 
Write it, then, on hearts that weep ! 
Oive it to the winds to keep ! 
Sighs the song that sings thy meeds 
Idly as the summer reeds ? 
Vain excuse ! Still Memory pleads. 
Slow, slow brain that prompting needs ! 
Slower heart that little heeds! 

Is it so ? 

HL 
Deep grief asketh deej) condoling. 
Dirge-like, ever toUing, tolHng : 
Where the ocean's bed is shoaling, 
Blue waves mto white surf rolling. 



IN ^TERNUil. 179^ 

Is the voice not unconsoling 

Of the surge? 
For the tyrant wind repents, 
Lashing all the elements 

With a scourge ! 
Storms dolorous lord it o*er us ! 
Lo ! the pale surf gleams before us ! 
Hark ! in melancholy chorus 
Sounding seas and rocks sonorous 

Moan thy dii-ge ! 

IV. 

Blow the trumpets of the storm 
Loudly o'er the Hero's form ! 
But for Youth, gay, generous, warm, 
Dear for every social charm. 
Meek-eyed Grief, in pale alarm. 

Tears down-pouring, 
Turns to minstrel poesie 
For more soothing elegy, 

All imploring ! 
AYere my heart-strings music-chords, 
Could I coin my soul to words, 
I would breathe a requiem, 
That my very tears should brim, 
With a gushing anguish dim ! 



180 IN iETERNUM. 

V. 

" Write an epitaph for me ! " 

In what terms of eulogy ? 

" He, with honest heart displayed 

In the world's huge masquerade, 

Had a child's simplicity 

With a soul of chivalry ; 

Pure as Bayard 
(Honor's mould and mirror clear) 
From reproach or sullying fear. 
Where in this age is his peer, 

Wlio, inspired 
By the glorious olden time, 
Fed his heart with deeds sublime, 
Like young eagles in their prime ! " 

VI. 

Like young eagles to the Sun, 
Thy ambition, upward, on, 
Soared to Honor ! Day is done. 
But, beyond Night's shadowy cone. 
Thou the glistening goal hast won. 

Even in death ! 
O, too large self-sacrifice ! 
Had life nothing to entice. 
Were Love's beating bosom ice, 



IN STERNUM. 181 

Whose soft breath 
Wooed thy stay, did never Truth 
Haunt the ambrosial heart of youth, 
Still thy death-doom would become 
Glorious as a martyrdom ! 

VII. 

Write an epitaph for thee ? 

Who shall strike the master-key 

Of that death-hushed harmony ? 

By thy spoken resolve sublime. 

Loftier than all labored rhyme, 

More august than antique chime 

Of great thoughts — in that dread time 

By death's portal — 
Earth and Heaven thy name shall cherish : 
" I with those that are to perish 
Take my chance ! " Thou shalt endure 
With the imperishable, the pure : 
Time's vast sea may not immure 

The Immortal ! 



TONS LACHRYI^IARUM. 



I. 

I SEE a country church, 
A country church-yard in the spring ; 

Build martins in the porch, 
And all about the blue birds sing ; 

Breathe the white poplars, laden 
Lilacs, and soft violets, balm : 

The world seems happy Eden, 
Ere Death was, when Love was calm. 

II. 

Yet do those violets blow 
r the grass about a fresh head-stone, 

Beauty above, below, 
Li the blue air, orbs Death alone : 

Wherefore, tho' bloom commences, 
Bud and blade, and the birds sing, 

The soul's grief dulls the senses, 
Things of joy no joy can bring. 



LONS LACHRYMARUM. 183 

III. 

And cliildren, young and fair, 
Their pure brows drooping from the day, 

Are in the church-yard there — 
Why turn they with dim eyes away ? 

Your hearts are choked with crying, 
Children by your mother's tomb ; 

Your hearts are with her, lying 
Under all that living bloom ! 

IV. 

Gifted and gi-aceful, ripe 
In mind, while purely feminine, 

A sweet and noble type 
Of woman — yea, a thing divine 

Lies here in cold clay coffined ; 
And that lovely type for ye. 

Of all her deep love orphaned, 
Passed in tears and agony ! 

V. 

No time from you can rive 
That beautiful, beloved face ; 

With her whole soul alive. 
It smiles now on her burial place ; 



184 FONS LACHRYMARUM. 

And now ye see Death cover 
All with solemn violet shade, 

Like by white moonlight over 
Whiter snow at cold moons made. 

VI. 

Like yon branch blossomed o'er 
Your life just burgeons into leaf; 

But live the triple score, 
And ye shall know no greater grief. 

Ah ! in God's love bewildering 
Seemeth it to feeble faith : 

Children, little children, 
Crying for a mother's death ! 

vn. 

No more, at morn and even, 
Your little clasped hands in prayer 

Her hands shall point to Heaven - 
No, nevermore ! — but she is there ! 

Broods o'er ye Love the Evangel, 
O'er the young the Spirit-Dove ; 

Christ gives your guardian angel ; 
Christ hath known a mother's love ! 



THE DAISY. 



Of all the flowers in the mede, 

Than most I love those flowers white and rede, 

Such as men callen daisies in our towne. 

******* 
The daisie or els the eye of dale." 

Chaucer. 



Sweet Daisy ! Sister Margaret ! 

Thine eyes are dim with tears, 
The lashes on thy cheek are wet : 

Thy heart seems full of fears. 
Or are they, clearest, but dissemblers 

Of a joy so deep 
That in such drops, soft passion's tremblers, 

Love may only weep ? 

Ah ! now thou 'rt smiling, Margaret ; 

TU kiss those tears away. 
Come forth : fantastic woe forget 

In fields and woodlands gay. 



186 • THE DAISY. 

Come — sunny-faced and sunny-hearted 

As this morn in May, 
As balmy-lipped and balmy -thoughted 

As the blossomed spray. 

Thy cheek's bloom matches, Margaret, 

That flower, pure red and white, 
Thy namesake,* once the poet's pet, 

Day's eye of dewy light ! 
It opes, by cottage and in wildwood. 

Still, at morning prime ; 
But past is poesie's sweet childhood. 

Hushed her sweetest rhyme. 

for old music, Margaret, 

That charmed green Windsor's side, 
To sing the Day-Star shining yet 

On fields with daisies pied ! 
Each dainty flower hath dews that ghster 

Like that Star above : 
The Eternal Beauty gave, fair sister. 

Both alike to love ! 

And ever we, dear Margaret, 
Will cherish simple things, 

* Daisies are Marguarites in the French.. 



THE DAISY. 187 

Since love for even a floweret 

From a deep fountain springs. 
On us May smiles like our sweet mother : 

"We were born in May : 
We'll love her blooms, and love each other, 

And dear God alway ! 



ON A PICTURE. 



She watched while wept the dews of even, 
Dews of deep feeling in her eyes ; 

And, as the dusk discolored Heavens, 
Her gaze grew dark with reveries. 

Lo ! on her brow, the Evening Star 
Clasps the rich clusters of her hair ! 

Or so it seemed, as I, from far, 

A wingless angel worsliipped there. 

And softly gloomed that planet bright 

As gloomed her eyes, their lashes drooping, 

Like Love o'erpowering half the Light 
In Seraphim when earthward stooping ! 



SONG 



Hark to the hollo, 

Follow, Follow — 
Silent else the night at its noon — 
Hark to the wimpling brook in the warm woodland nook, 
Warm with the balmy airs of June : 

Follow, O, Follow, 

A musical hollo. 
Follow on to the still lagoon ; 
While on the water the yellow-leaved lilies look 
Yellower in the golden moon ! 

Follow, Follow ! — 
With lustrous corolla. 
Lustrous and large, the magnolia grows — 
Night-blowing jasmines bloom, living with wild jjerfume, 
There where the lulled wave dreamily flows — 
Follow, Follow, 
Follow, O, Follow, 



190 SONG. 

Never a wiiid from tlie blue heaven blows, 
There where the charmed bu'd sleeps with his gorgeous 
^ plume, 
All by the lake which the little brook knows. 



FANS AND FLIETATIONS. 



When skies, unwinged by zephyr, hurt 

The summer even's enjoyment, 
To flirt a fan, to fan a flirt. 

How charming an employment ! 
So let me cool that warm cheek, flushed 

Like Heaven's ambrosial azure. 
Like roses over lilies crushed — 

And, O, how sweet the pleasure ! 

Sweet, as the gloaming waneth dim, 

And grows the star of Vesper, 
Behind the fan's convenient rim 

Love's tenderest words to whisper — 
Half truth, half sport — no matter — so 

Thy lovely eyes shall glisten ; 
Lisped fondness modulated low 

Lest prudes and rivals listen. 



1D2 FANS AND TLIRTATIONS. 

Aiid should such neighborhood prevent 

Lip murmurs — still no matter : 
The eyes alone are eloquent 

To flirt with and to flatter. 
O, love is lucid in the eyes 

"When hearts indeed are bright'ninp^. 
As Nature's warmth, thro' evening skies, 

Is shown in summer-lightning ! 



KATHARmE OF ARRAGON. 



An agony of lamenting ! — and not only 

Her sobs the sense of her own hearing pained, 
But hearkened she, within her chamber lonely, 
Tears falling heavily, drop by large drop, loud 
Upon the echoing marble floor ; and, bowed 

That sumptuous head, on trembling knees sustained 
The dark redundancies of ringlet rained 
All round her, in a cataract of cloud. 



12 



A SKETCH. 



O, PRiMROSE-FEESH and very fair, 

She laughs into the morning air, 
Lavish of joy and liberal with her charms ; 

And from her dancing tresses shakes 

The sunlight, large in golden flakes. 
And perfume amorous of the curl it warms. 

Queen-Psyche of the butterflies, 

A Hebe in her heart and eyes. 
With something, scarce defined, of incompleteness ; 

A creature of the summer skies, 

A nature like the strawberry's, 
Depending on the sunshine for its sweetness. 



THE SEASONS. 



Sad is it when the Autumnal woodlands sere 
Put on the blossom-hues of April bowers : 

Sadder the second childhood of the year, 

With wisps of straw crowned and some withered 
flowers ; 

Into the wintry tempest, Lear-like, driven, 
Unhoused, unsheltered, of all glory shorn 
And garniture of leaf; with naked arms forlorn 

Appealing to the old age of the Heaven ! 

But joyous is the time, when, from the South, 

His child, the Spring, comes, hke a lady and queen, 
A happier Cordelia, formed to win 

All hearts unto her love, blandishing youth with youth ; 

With filial flowers and tears covering the bier 

Of pomp foregone, poor, old, unmonarched Lear ! 



A CONCEIT. 



I SAW, in a Brazilian bower,* 

'Mid blooms all rich and rare, 
A strange large lustrous azure flower, 

Whose glow made soft the air, 
Till seemed it to my glistening eye 

To flutter from the spray ; 
And soared a bright blue butterfly 

In the blue heaven away. 



Like Love, when lost his spirit-wife. 
That flower, tho' still in view. 

How dimmed, disjoined that winged life. 
Its twin sweet shade of blue ! 



* Walking in the beautiful suburbs of Rio cTe Janeiro, on one occasion, I 
mistook a rich blue butterfly resting on a flower of precisely the same color 
for a portion of the flower itself. A few moments after, the butterfly flew 
away, — and hence the conceit. 



A CONCEIT. 197 

WMle the light butterfly aloft, 

A joy aerial, flew. 
And melted into raptures soft 

Of Heaven's pure sapphire hue. 

So have I seen, more exquisite 

Than any earthly thing, 
The Psyche of thy spirit flit 

On its delighted wing ; 
As much at home in sky or bower, 

To its true instincts given 
The tender beauty of the flower. 

The purity of Heaven ! 



TO A CANARY BIRD. 



Sweet little fairy bird, 

Gentle Canary bird, 
Beats not thy tiny breast with one regret 

Is it enough for thee 

Ever, as now, to be 
Caged as a prisoner, caged as a pet ? 

Gay as thy golden wing, 
Careless thy caroling, 

Thou art as happy as happy can be : 
Singing so merrily. 
Hast thou no memory 

Of thy lost native isle over the sea ? 

Not the Hesperides 
Floating on fabled seas, 
Nothing in Nature and nothing in Song, 



TO A CANARY BIRD. 199 

Match with the magic smile, 
Which, from thine own sweet isle. 
Hushes the heaving wave all the year long. 

Summer and youthful Spring, 

Blooming and blossoming. 
Hand in hand, sister-like, stray thro' the clime. 

There thou wert born, amid 

Fruits colored like thee, hid 
In the green groves of the orange and lime. 

Then was the silver lute 

Of the young maiden mute, 
When, from the shade of her own cottage-eaves, 

Rang first thy joyous trill. 

While, with a gentle thrill, 
Tho' the breeze stirred them not, shivered the leaves. 

Thou, like a spirit come 

From thy far island-home, 
Seemest of sunshine and spring-time the voice. 

Light-hearted is thy lay 

As, on the lemon-spray, 
Love, little singing bird, made thee rejoice. 

For, from thy lady's lip, 
Oft is it thine to sip 



200 TO A CANARY BIRD. 

Sweetness wliicli dwells not in fruit or in flower 
And when her shaded eye 
Rests on thee pensively, 

Moonlight was ne'er so soft silv'ring thy bower. 

Likest to thee is Love : 

Never it cares to rove, 
When its wild winglets feel Beauty's control. 

Would, little bird, that I 

Might to thine island fly, 
All, all alone with the girl of my soul ! 

There should'st thou sing to us : 

Tender and tremulous, 
Our hearts happy with love unexpressed. 

Sweet little fairy bird, 

Gentle Canary bird, 
How would'st thou be by that dear girl caressed 



CHRISTMAS CHIMES. 

IX PRESENTATION OF TENNYSON'S ''IN IMEMOEIAM. 



Hail happy bells ! Hail happy morn ! 
While angels from the belfry chime, 
All in the calm and gracious time, 

The peace of Christ to souls forlorn : 

To souls forlorn and lost without 

Sweet peace and God's good will they ring ;: 

And Jubilate seem to sing, 
In crystal clearness sparkling out. 



Ring cheerily, crystal chimes ! and bring, 
O sparkling chimes ! to her, my friend, 
All white hopes that in waiting tend, 

All seraph raptures, as ye ring. 



902 CHRISTMAS CHIMES. 

Or slowlier swung, with many a stop 
Whicli silent thought fills sweetly up, 
Into her heart, as some pure cup, 

Distil balm-music, drop by drop. 

For Earth is nearer Heaven to-day. 

And Earth was nearer Heaven, when she. 
The dawn of her nativity, 

Calm in that holy advent lay ; 

Nor heard, a babe of many prayers. 
The angel chiming in her heart, — 
In Heaven who chose the better part 

No truer name of Mary bears. 

If silent to the outward ear. 

Ring in her heart yet, Christmas chimes ! 

In symphony to mournful rhymes, 
Melodious ring with solemn cheer ; 

Iting, — while the griefs this book reveals, 
Sad truths, which here the poet saith, 
Are married to immortal Faith, — 

Ring, Memory, Hope, your bridal peals ! 



CHRISTMAS CHIMES. 203 

I hear you on tlie frosty wind, 

Ye chime and chant from yonder church ; 

Twin seraphs, dove-like on your perch, 
I see you perfect in my mind. 

Your eyes each th' other's mirrors are ; 
But, inward turned, weep Memory's eyes 
Tears, touched with light ; and, thro' the skies, 

Hope, smiUng, looketh on and far. 

O, roundeth every raining tear 

True to Heaven's music, like an orb ; 
And flowers of thine, sweet Hope, absorb 

Thy showery griefs, Memory dear ! 

And ye assimilate more and more, 

Hope, Memory, as your looks I search, 
Whence — voiced, too, by the chiming church — 

Beams one expression ; We adore ! 



ORALIE. 



I. 
Here where our tryst was made, 
Sweet, be our farewell said ; 
Where glooms in mellow shade 

This dear old tree ; 
Where emerald dews are damping, 
Golden glow-worms lamping, 
Oralie. 

n. 

*Xis night, without her moon, 
Dark, tender, rich with June ; 
A night that's best in tune 
With thee and me : 
Its haunting melancholy 
Solemn seems and holy, 
Oralie. 



ORALIE. 205 

III. 

No merry bird doth mock ; 
But lovely voices talk, 
All in tlie woodland walk, 

Of only thee ; 
The wavelet, as it rilleth 
Thi'o' cool cresses, trilleth 
Oralie. 

IV. 

The wind a moment swells 

The airy syllables : 

'Tis hushed — What fairy bells 

Ring symphony? 
Do lilies of the valley 
Tmkle musically 

Oralie ? 

V. 

'Tis fancy, all the time, 
That plays so pretty a chime. 
Sweet as melHfluous rhyme 
That rhythms thee, 
Sweeter than greenwood whisp'reth, 
Or the wave-lapse lispeth, 
Oralie. 



206 ORALIE. 

VI. 
But, all ! thine eyes are wet : 
They ask — do I forget ? 
And can love trifle yet 
"With fancy free, 
"When, with this sad leave-taking. 
One heart is nigh breaking ? 
Oralie. 

VII. 
Pale, pale with very woe, 
O, look not on me so ! 
Dear love ! mine own will flow 

The while I see 
Those eyes, like drooping pansies, 
"Weep at my wild fancies, 
Oralie. 

VIII. 

Awhile let passion sleep : 
Soon will it wake to weep, 
Too soon to weep this deep, 

Deep misery 
Of hope no more twin-hearted. 
Life from dear life parted, 
Oralie. 



ORALIE. 207 



IX. 

I tread upon a brink : 

I fear my soul would shrink, 

And look not — dare not think : 

Alas ! 'twould flee 
The gulf; and here, in madness, 
"Woo a desperate gladness, 
OraUe. 

X. 

There Honor points me now 
With pale, imperious brow : 
And must, O, must I bow 

In agony ? 
There cold-commandeth Duty ; 
Here weeps Love and Beauty, 
Oralie. 

XI. 

Look up thro' tears, wan Love ! 
Sad Beauty ! Thro' yon grove, 
Green, from a starlight cove, 

Sparkleth the sea : 
There my bark, bird-like sitteth ; 
Ere the morn it flitteth, 
Oralie. 



208 ORALIE. 

XII. 

With thee borne by thy side, 

My beautiful ! my bride ! 

Its white sea-wing would glide, 

How light ! how free ! 
Love sings — Love's star would pilot 
To some bright, lone islet, 
Oralie. 

XIII. 
Yes ! Love sings in my heart, 
O, wherefore need we part ? 
Come, cherished as thou art. 

Then come with me ! — 
I sheathe my soul in armor : 
I have quelled the charmer, 
Oralie. 

XIV. 
And in the right am strong ; 
Deaf to the guileful tongue. 
Which bids me do thee wrong — 

0, not for me 
Be one high duty slighted, 
Tho' our souls be blighted, 
Orahe. 



ORALIS. 209 

XV. 

Saith not the old verse sooth, 
True love ran never smooth ? 
Quench thy quick heart, O Youth ; 

Or ashes be ! 
One pure flame Heaven starreth : 
Earthly passion charreth, 
Oralie. 

XVI. 
Alas the withermg blight ! 
Alas the blasting hght ! 
Alas the crushing might ! 

The fair green tree 
Lies low, forever flowerless ; 
And thy love was powerless, 
Orahe. 

XVII. 
Now let me clasp thee near. 
Dear heart — God knows how dear I 
'Why that wild look of fear ? 

For these must be. 
These tears, sobs, sad caresses, 
These last tendernesses, 
Oralie. 
14 



210 OEALIE. 

XVIII. 

Farewell ! We meet in Heaven ! 

Purer for having striven 

For right, God, who hath given 

New faith to me, 
Will bless thee, tho' he grieve thee, 
As His child receives thee, 
Oralie. 



CHILDHOOD. 



I. 

Give me the soul of the lark, 
I will soar merrily and alone 

Up from the meadows dark 
Into the limpid air all my own ; 

Where not an echo even 
Shall share the joy of my matin song ; 

All, all of Earth and Heaven 
Shall unto me and my lay belong. 

H. 

Give me the bee-bird's bliss 
In the first blooms of the young year's bowers, 

Aye, for an innocent kiss, 
Nestling in laps of the lady flowers. 

I'd be, in balmy Spring, 
The Sylphid fabled to tend the Rose, 

Blest if but one sweet thing 
For only me should a charm disclose. 



212 CHILDHOOD. 

III. 

Give me, 0, give me back 
My morn of life and its May once more : 

Over the cloudy rack 
Then, like the lark, shall hope, singing, soar : 

Then, on a honeyed track, 
Joy shall flit, like the bird, banqueting free — 

Give me my boyhood back, 
When all that was lovely seemed made for me ! 

IV. 

For me, in the blue abysm, 
The stars, and the field-flowers at my feet. 

Alas for the egotism 
Unselfish of childhood's visions fleet ! 

Youth, as a cherub orbed 
In his own light, should the artist limn ; 

In a glad love absorbed 
For all things, dreaming that all love him. 

V. 

So heavenly in humanity 
Is the child thro' this infinite love ; 

Such and so pure is the vanity 
Once with the woof of all feeling wove. 



CHILDHOOD. 213 



No more my own soul saitli : 
" For thee cloth Beauty the world adorn, 

Cherish this earnest faith, 
Thou for the Beautiful wast born ! " 



VI. 

False was that voice of youth ? 
False with its intimations fine ? 

Whence, then, the veiled truth 
Which maketh the poet's dream divine ? 

Unto himself his Art 
Nature with flatteries sweet endears ; 

And, in his child-like heart, 
Fancies lie deep as the source of tears ! 



VII. 

Enough of an idle rhyme : 
It jangles : the heart no echo rings. 

Only in life's clear prime 
We are all poets ; then thoughts are things. 

Once was the runnel's glass 
Flushed with hues of a shadowing Rose, 

And now do the shed leaves pass 
Away, where the colorless crystal flows. 



214 CHILDHOOD. 

VIII. 

O, never thy mind should nurse 
A beautiful feeling to be its grave ! 

So would my farewell verse 
In the dear name of our friendship crave : 

So prays it — so sighs Adieu ! 
All that is lovely — in sisterhood — 

Ever keep perfect and new 
As when, in Earth's childhood, God called it good ! 



EEEATA. 

Page 49, line 8, for transatlantic read cisatlantic. 
" 56, " 20, for hand read arms. 
" 111, " 2, for seem read scene. 
" 146, " 5, for caves read cores. 



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